Labels: Rough Trade
Review by: Luke Younger
NYC’s ARE Weapons don’t have much going for them. They’re unoriginal, painfully run of the mill and were signed by Rough Trade in the peak of last year’s NYC madness only to have been somewhat left behind and forgotten. However they have a couple of saving graces, in the sense that they could be deemed good looking, and they now boast Paul Sevigny (brother of actress Chloe) as a full time member as opposed to his previous role as manager. The groups self-titled debut, falls inbetween weird musical ground such as Suicide esque artiness, electroclash with some gutteral snottiness thrown in for good measure. Sadly what sounds on paper like a mouth water proposition, actually turns out to be slightly short of the mark. ARE Weapons are too aggressive sounding for the hipsters, and not aggressive enough for the likes of me. Not to say they are totally useless though, this record definatley has some moments of glory, like the don’t-give-a-fuck isms of “Street Gang” and the anthemic closer “Hey World”. This band may be nothing special, and they may never release another record ever again, but you can’t help but admire ARE Weapons’ audacity and deluded nature. 30 minutes of dumb, stupid, no brainer electro, which doesn’t force you to do anything. Except for maybe skip past track 5, that one is actually shit.