Labels: Topshelf Records
Review by: Andy Malcolm
I have appreciated the work of this band ever since I heard their demo so it’s nice to see that they have eventually reached the stage of releasing an LP. So many bands rush headlong into this process these days that we’re left with under-cooked records by rookie bands who should really have been handed a red shirt by the label and told to wait it out a bit longer. Pswingset ain’t one of those bands. They’ve been honing their craft and “All Our False Starts” is anything but.
OK, let’s get down to business. This record sounds exactly like the kind of shit that was being made by smart, late 90s indie rock bands that listened to a bit of hardcore. It attempts to achieve nothing more than that. This fact in itself will mean that pretty much everyone who ever buys records will have no interest in this album at all, and that’s fair enough. Is there really a need for a band in 2012 to sound like this? No, not really. BUT. And this is a very strong BUT, Pswingset have totally nailed this sound and when was the last time you heard a full length album that sounded even a little like Farewell Bend or Giants Chair? About 14 years, I’d wager. This record is brutally unfashionable, but Pswingset plainly give no shits, and the chances are that a fair percentage of those who buy records released by Topshelf have never heard Farewell Bend and haven’t yet gotten round to checking the output of late 90s DeSoto Records. If those things are second nature to you, then you’ll not be at all surprised to encounter a brooding, pensive album of downbeat indie rock, with persistent grooves and momentary mathematical interludes which is almost guaranteed to please you. So this is a fine album. Very much a genre piece, but one of my favourite genres thankyouverymuch and Pswingset have done a stand up job of revisiting a sound that has been consigned to the indie rock dustbin for far too long whilst far less exciting branches have been relentlessly strip mined the past few years.
Sidenote: I particularly like the fact that the artwork looks massively like a Bluetip record.