Labels: Bent Rail
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Both bands on here indulge in some post-rock meanderings, though in slightly different ways. Plate Six steal the show for me with an awesome wandering effort full of twinkling guitar and gently sung vocals evoking the sound of latter day Boilermaker in places. I am pretty sure there is a hidden layer of Kolya-esque spoken vocals, but they are buried in the mix and everything else on here is pretty clear so I could just be imagining things and they are just the voices in my head. Nah, I am definitely sure they are there. The track never quite explodes above a moderately excitable level or anything too noisy, but it is very nice and I am going to be tracking down their full length for sure to see if it’s as good as this.
Spanish Boat Patrol are instrumental and play one really long song that winds it’s way onwards gently, with a slight jazzy touch to the guitar. If you are familiar with Aerial M or perhaps Paul Newman (the band, not the dude) then maybe that gives you some idea. Just nice and pretty guitar playing, lots of staring at the floor and no words. That’s how it starts out. Then it mutates into more of a freakout and gets a whole lot noisier and less structured. This sounds as if it was recorded live, I think I can hear people talking in the background. Oh yeah, they clap at the end, of course it’s live. I’m dumb.
I love the understated silver on white packaging too, Plate Six also have a bare tree on their label on the vinyl. Emo.