Labels: Paradise Vendors
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Here’s a couple of bands I wouldn’t have come across without the aid of people being excited about music on the Collective forum. More people should be excited about music on there. Anyway, Pens is a girl droning vocals over a wall of drums and fuzzed out sound. Recorded on something little more effective than a dictaphone, with the drumkit sat practically on the mic. You can just about pick out a little bit of what else is going on. They have an LP coming out soon, by all accounts. I suspect it may be a little more fun to listen to than this, but there is at least some joy to be gleaned from these two songs of no-fi mush which occasionally hint at some pop nous particularly on the hypnotic second track.
Male Bonding have an LP coming out on Subpop. Being on Subpop generally means a band is playing pretty cool music of a genre that is currently super-hip, and the band is playing it in a slightly more palatable fashion than their peers, and thus has the appeal to actually sell records to indie hipsters. I’m not entirely sure who Male Bonding’s peers are, they are also playing blurry indie, I am guessing that is what the deal is here? Playing kind of quirky indie rock but recording it live in an incredibly awful way. I like awful ways, but I am not entirely convinced it works with this kind of sound. The second song is too mathy for my tastes also, bludgeoning a bit of hardcore into the mix as well. Overall though, the now tedious and predictable blockade of broken sound is starting to grate rather than ingratiate.
Interesting split from these UK bands, although I suspect both have far better material than this, and hopefully they’ll be more comfortable with actually letting you hear how good they are in the future.