Labels: Adagio830
Review by: Andy Malcolm
I kind of wonder if Final Club took their album name from a combo of Blank Generation and Entertainment. Maybe. Anyway, moving on from that hopeless guess work, lets have a goo with this record. Final Club is dudes from Teenage Cool Kids, who themselves finally got round to releasing their latest LP late last year. I haven’t given that album as many spins as this one, which suggests either I have been more diligent with Final Club, given that we were sent it for review and therefore I needed to make sure I know what I am writing about, or I prefer this. I think it’s a bit of both. Blank Entertainment retains a few elements of TCK’s sound, notably the slightly snotty vocals, but the indie rock on offer here is perhaps tinged a little bit more by punk rock, of both the post and un-post varieties. There’s only 8 tracks on the record so it bashes by in quite a hurry, managing to keep me interested for pretty much the duration.
It crashes out of the gate with the rather enjoyable “Tragic World” before switching from 45RPM to 33 onto the initially rather listless “Buy Into It”. I am quite taken by the slothful nature of this one, and the lackadaisical pace is complimented by lyrics such as “I understand, what it feels like, getting older”, before all of a sudden the coffee kicks in and this one flies of the handle with guitars squealing and squalling like when Built to Spill get all crazy and shit. They have a habit on a few tracks of dicking around a bit, but fair play, it generally works. Anyway, from that point on the album maintains a pretty solid direction of lively, 1990s indie rock that can’t help but be appreciated by those with affection for BtS, Dinosaur Jr and Superchunk. I suppose it’s a little unfair to tar Final Club with such unabashed retrogazing as there is far more to it than that lazy comparison, but given that we are suffering through a period of drought in the genre, you may as well dig back into an era when independent rock music bands were pretty fucking good. And noisy. And punk. Final Club just put their own spin on things, conjuring up some bloody solid songs with weird little diversions that keep me listening.
So that’s what you’ve got. A punk rock indie rock record. That’ll do me.