Labels: hey presto!
Review by: Danny Parsons
This 7″ is a posthumous follow-up to the band’s s/t EP from a while back. Four songs in total (one of them being a re-recording of “In the Hospital’ which, in my eyes is far superior to the version on the cdr) which continue in the same fashion as the EP. It becomes clear from the outset of the first song -“Across the Great Divide’- that the vocals have changed a tad; the guy’s voice appears to be a lot throatier and hoarser now which lends the songs a slightly crunchier feel. They still aren’t that clear though and always seem to be in the background a bit which I’m thankful for as I really enjoyed that aspect of the band’s sound on the cdr. As I stated in my review of the cdr, this band seems to act as a kind of platform for the vocalist and guitarist; in terms of guitar work on this release, there’s much more noodling and twiddling “” quite intricate stuff. The only song that seems to differ from this is the last track in which there’s a nice instrumental build-up at the beginning where all of the instruments compliment each other very nicely. There’s a few chanty, sing-along bits too in which everyone has a stab at vocals. I’ve really got quite a thing for screamed/shouted/yelped Aussie vocals at the moment and James Dean probably do (did) it best. So yeah, really, really good. I don’t have a bad word to say about it aside from the fact they’re not together anymore so”¦no more releases of this calibre from them! High point for me “” the build up in the first track of everyone shouting “without songs in these cities, how are we meant to live?”. Effing fabulous!