Labels: Phratry
Review by: Alex Deller
A few years back I reviewed a couple of Phratry releases for review, and they were uniformly good and uniformly interesting. I haven’t kept tabs on what they’ve done in the interim, but when Malcolm pinged this one my way the label’s seal of quality was enough for me to give it a go without a second thought. Turns out they’ve still got the chops, and while Gazer are a new one on me I’m hoping we won’t remain strangers from here on in. The record is split down the middle, with the band’s newest stuff (the four ‘Fake Bulbs’ tracks) on the A-side and their previous EP (‘Phone Commercial’) on the flip. Musically it’s jagged, awkward, inventive stuff that could variously be described as post-punk, post-hardcore or noise-rock, depending on the mood you were in. The guitars scrawl and whine, the vocals howl disconsolately and things have an overall sense of nervousness that threatens to overrun your senses at any given moment. The newer material is definitely the stronger stuff, and even when you think you have something like ‘Bethany’ figured out thanks to its fairly standard, skronky backbone riff you’ll find enough intriguing stuff either side of it to keep your interest piqued. The older material is similarly noisy, similarly energetic and very far from duff, but by comparison it sounds like the band were maybe in too much of a rush to get their point across and hurtled for the finish line rather than pausing to think about just how they were going to clear the whole dang mess up once it was made. It’s all grand stuff as far as I’m concerned, though, and one for those of you out there who’re fond of Gravity, Goldenrod and the more coherent end of the Skin Graft roster.