Vanilla Pod - Once Was Home - 7

Labels: Them’s Good
Review by: Andy Malcolm

Ah, a new offering from the mighty Pod. Top notch live band, will it transfer to the vinyl? Mark that down as a big fat YUP.

Only two tracks, but both grab your foot and make it tap up and down repeatedly. My personal fave of the two songs is the first, “Once Was Home” which I remember from their live set. Brilliant. A superb melodic punk rock song, with added dashes of emotional hardcore. Lots of cool shouting and a brilliant head lodging chorus. The guitars insistently drive their way into your face and the drumming wallops a long. It’s relentless, somehow the song seems to keep picking up the energy from some unseen source as it goes a long. They even have some screaming in there at the end. And some brief almost jangly bits at times. Maybe they’ve been listening to Spy Versus Spy.

B-side “Say Today” errs more on the fast melodic hardcore sound favoured by the likes of One Car Pile Up. Not so much my cup of tea generally, but they do it magnificently, don’t have a singer who sounds like he is American, have a kind of emotional sound and a fantastico chorus which slows down a little and goes really super tuneful.

This smokes. My favest Brit punk single of ’99 so far. When’s the album out?