Labels: Sex Cave Records
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Sirs start their first song with hand claps. RUN AWAY!!! No wait, come back. This is pretty good actually. “Numero 7″ has a nice groove, and the vocals glide along neatly, with a few outbursts of screaming in a Cap’n Jazz fashion. It kind of falls away at the end into a muddly mess though. “Beaver Fever” rumbles out of the blocks with more screaming, and some frantic guitar. It reminds me over the somewhat obscure band, the Ladderback. Pacey and punky, with spazzy Braid-like rhythms. This is pretty decent and differs nicely from other bands that take a technical approach to this style of music. Bet they’d be fun live.
Chalk Talk bizarrely cover “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” with some gruesome gang vocals. Wow. I couldn’t make it through this, it’s quite awful. It’s followed with “Misquamicut Has Bigger Waves Though”, which is cheerfully generic twiddlemo. Guys shout a bit, and play guitar repetitiously. There’s almost nothing to this song at all, very throw-away. I’d say Chalk Talk were kind of in the same league as Hightide Hotel, which is to say, strictly second division.
Worth checking out if Sirs sound like they might be your bag. Chalk Talk’s contributions here don’t match up though. Maybe they’ve gotten better since this as apparently they are touring the UK later this year.