Giant Robot & the City of Tokyo - Best - CD (2006)

Labels: self released
Review by: Andy Malcolm

Apologies to this band for taking a long time to review this, especially after I enquired after getting a copy of it in the first place. Pfft. I’m a slacker, and so are these guys judging by the music they play. The hardest thing about reviewing this cd is getting past the disgusting cover, of a dude puking. Yeuch! My good buddy and erstwhile inventor of Collective, Cavell, even says he knows the guy who dontated his sick to the cd cover. Great.

This cd gets off to a good start with the slow indie rock of “Flow”, where they sound like Archers of Loaf with laboured vocals and tired riffing. Thats always going to get into my good books! From then on they roam through 10 more tracks of dirtied up indie rock with those great vocals where it sounds like the singer is finding it an effort to even open his lazy mouth, quality. The guitars are fuzzy and scruffy and the rhythm rocks and eases off as required. The band lope along finding a niche somewhere between Built to Spill, Pavement and the afforementioned Archers, and really, thats all you need to do to impress the likes of me. Each song is plied with a high dosage of melody, some kind of weird, deceptive catchiness (how can a band that often sounds like they are still in bed be catchy?), and I find it difficult to find fault.

Really good quality shit, I hope this band gets to the stage where someone helps them put a proper release out because they definitely deserve it.