Labels: Pink Pistol
Review by: Alex Deller
Many of you will be aware of Rapider Than Horsepower thanks to a growing body of quality releases, and their side of this here split adds another two screwy songs to their warped canon. “All Kinds Excited” starts with some sinuous strings before setting us down unsteadily on what is, for Rapider at least, terra firma, with thin, funky guitars that ramble incoherently after their singer’s nonsensical stream-of-consciousness yelp. “That Ain’t Right” is a faster jam coming across like a mix of Built to Spill and the Beastie Boys, backed by a sliver of 50s rock n’ roll and the chiming of a lost xylophone, the resultant mess sounding like it might’ve been gobbled up by your cassette deck before being spat back out again as some garbled, brain-damaged Modest Mouse mishap.
The Coke Dares side of this record is half embarrassing, half utter genius. It sounds like thirty year old men playing a medley of choruses from their favourite 70s rock songs, snagging influences from the Undertones, Kiss and everyone in between for minute-long grabs of the crotch that’d flounder hopelessly if they lasted longer and became actual songs. “Black Beautys” is pure fist-pumping, overweight bar rock, while “I Like Rocking All The Time” stands as a less-than-humble paean to the joys of debauchery, effectively condensing the entire Guns n’ Roses back catalogue into a primitive growl and faltering blues-based riff which lasts about as long as most drunken, sticky, teenage fumblings that no one ever remembers come morning.
In its strange way the pairing is perfect, an experimental mating of two bands whose circuitry isn’t entirely in order, back to back in a dry-humpathon that’s as throwaway as it is oddly compelling.