We need more of these things – compilations of a bunch of UK bands who hang around in the punk scene, yet don’t get much ‘word’. Yo? Despite the title, this is not necessarily bands who immediately would get classified by reviewer goons like myself as emo. But some of them are. By the way, saw a cool new UK emo band playing with the rocking Bluetip last night. Cortina (ex-members of Tribute) playing awesome collegey indie rock a la Beezewax, with added Christie FD and TITR influences. Splendido.
Ok. Listofun…
- Rydell: 2 tracks, the first one – “Across 3 Parks”, I don’t think I’ve got anywhere else so must remember it from the live show. It’s short, pacey, melodic emocore with their trademarked strain vocals. You know the score, Rydell = UK’s Split Lip / Chamberlain. They also do “Home” which I have a demo version of. It’s done in a stripped down, almost acoustic fashion and is really rather impressive. Vocalists take turns, both hoarse & sung. Great.
- Yeast: I saw these guys about a year ago, supporting Braid and paid scant attention. I wanted to see Braid! And anyways, Yeast were playing some sort of post-hardcore style or something which I didn’t really understand at the time. So it came as a surprise when I first heard the song “Eyebrows” here, as it’s total emo rock reminding of a lot of the Deep Elm stuff. Fairly mid paced and melodic, solid but nothing out of the ordinary. “Drown” on the other hand, is more what I was expecting. Quirky, dischordant post-hardcore with stops and starts and spoken vocals, breaking into bursts of noisy energy and screaming. Hoover? A little Native Nod? Heading that way. I like this a lot more than the other song.
- Grand Central: one song from the demo / cd and one newbie. “Never Say Goodbye” kicks in with totally cool rumbling bass and builds into a great little emocore / rock track a long the lines of Sense Field mixed with a bit of Dag Nasty. This song has so many subtle and clever touches to hook you in it’s unreal. “White Paper Delay” is yeah, Sense Field + TITR goodness, slower and more miserable sounding than the other song here. GC have great vocals and by all accounts are an awesome live band.
- Soeza: first up is “Grease the Receiver” which is some groovy, jazzy booty shaking fun. I really don’t know what the fuck this is to be honest, it’s not way out and weird, just different. Not as whacked as Get Hustle, but maybe moving towards that. Trumpet and piano. “Chronic Wrongdoing” is herky-jerky and kinda sounds like you’re stumbling home at 3am. It’s the loping basslines that do it. There’s some excellent and very strong girl vocals going on here. Heh, liable to confuse the heck out a ya, I guess this is just so out of place on this comp, but it’s not too bad at all!
- the Babies 3: two songs that don’t appear to be from the new album (which rocks!), which is kinda weird because the “Target Practice” has the lyrics from which the album title was taken. Anyways, it’s also got a lot of pretty twinkles duelling it out the more rumbling guitar and distinctive vocals. Sounds like a big TITR influence to me on this track, but they’re making more out of it than most. Spirals into a great big epic emo end of the world finale. Just how I like ’em. “Feint Ruled” is punkier, catchy and all round fine. Has a pretty original sound and once more the duelling guitars are top notch.
- Inside Right: these guys are getting a lot of ‘props’ from the scene, and while they have a great song title: “Four Fingered BMX Rider”, I am having trouble doing anything more than making yet another Texas Is The Reason comparison here (TITR’s faster songs). Even the vocals have a bit of a Garrett edge to them at times! Still, it’s very well done and is another prime example of UK emo rock done good. Split 7″ with Sunfactor soon, hopefully it’ll see them developing their own sound a little, but it’ll be worth a look anyway.
- Month of Birthdays: “Heightened” is taken from their last 7″, and is that gloomy, dark post-hardcore that was their prevailing style back then. It’s ok, but really their new album absolutely walks all over it in every way conceivable. Subjugation should have donated an LP track and maybe that would help shift a few more copies.
- Jetpak: they coulda bin a contedhuh! Man, these guys were just so good and it’s a shame they had to split. No band in the Uk punk scene harmonises as well as Jetpak do, sorry did. “The Bowling Song” is absolutely lovely, upbeat poppy emo rock which will have you bobbing your head and then convulsing to the groove when it all gets noisy and RAWK! later on. I dunno who they sound like, there’s a small bit of Promise Ring, and some other bands. But it’s all good, and those harmonies will kill you. Why did you have to split up you bastards?
- Sunfactor: “Like The Angel You Are”. I have this track 94 times now, and so do you. You know the score, midpaced TITR style emo with passionate vocals and twinkly parts. Bonus points for still featuring the excellent “beeoow” sound fuck-up near the start.
- Coag: sounds like it’s going to be something special at the start, slow building and twinkly with kind of semi-gravelly vocals like Grant Broccoli didn’t have a car in his throat. Then it fires up into a pretty nice indie / emo song. Geez, Boilermaker? Stuff like that. I wouldn’t mind hearing more, because I don’t know who the hell these guys are.
- Spy versus Spy: an acoustic demo track where for extra fun value, they leave in the part where someone gives them a phone call. If you didn’t know, you’d never guess this was the Spy’s. Nicely sung vocals over slow guitars. Gets more upbeat in places. Fine stuff, dunno how new this is though.
A very competetent comp, missing one or two bands (probably those that haven’t recorded yet – i.e. Pylon, Carver, Cortina and Jay Schraeder), and well worth your moolah. Maybe this’ll become a series of releases in future once more these bands start springing up as they surely will.