Labels: Barely Regal – Dingleberry – sncl
Review by: MH
Debut album from Nottingham punks Soul Structure. People who read this website regularly are pretty familiar with them by now what with them featuring members of Plaids, What Price, Wonderland? and others. Soundwise, they’ve not gone a million miles away from their debut “Body of Man” EP which appeared last year soon after the end of Plaids. The frequently frenetic pace of that record is still there but this time there is also a more restrained and patient side with changes of pace and tangents being explored. In that sense, it’s a much looser record and more developed. It’s in the midst of some of these tempo changes that some of their less obvious influences materialise – see the slow parts of “Cruel Matriarch” and “Daughter” for the kind of drifting pondering that Polaris excelled at. There’s a healthy 90s UK emo influence in general and even the production fits in well with that sound. Really though this whole record hovers around the outskirts of a number of genres with intricate, bendy and distorted guitar lines laced through each track. They will obviously compared to Plaids a fair bit with Joe Caithness’ vocals but Soul Stucture are a little more awkward and a little less direct. Closing track, “Shot Once” ensures things finish on a high – it’s a tense and bendy track that teeters on the edge throughout without ever falling off the edge. If you needed any more reasons to listen to this, then Celia from The Blue Period features on vocals on a couple of the tracks.