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Okay gather together three young fillies with a collective CV that cites memberships with Electrelane, the Briefs, the Woggles, Puta-Pons and the Returnables – pair them with a demented drummer with the apparent onstage antics that suggest some kind of bloodline to Keith Moon but blessed with the work ethic and variation of Slits / Banshees / Creatures tub thumper Budgie and then set upon them the task to go away for a while and produce something vaguely spiky and wild with it.
Several months down the line and they return with the wiry self released ‘Sick Times’ EP (featured in all their naked glory here). This you might rightly (though misguidedly) think is a blip, the work of impish youthful exuberance. But then to repeat the trick again with a further nine (10 if you count the unnamed doomily frazzled reverb heavy mystery track which mooches in 10 minutes after the parting ‘High Tide’) party trashing wig flipping toxic cuts and you can already hear the deafening sound of the ‘your new favourite band’ whispers filtering from out of the underground.
‘Flex Time’ is an unholy hybrid, it never settles in any one specific generic medium preferring instead to assume a myriad of spiritual connections so disparate that its ultimately laying claim to it being their sound rather than anyone else’s – a trashcan trawling of mid 60’s Pebbles flashbacks, schizoid late 70’s no wave / new wave and post punk fall outs (listen out for the heavy influence of ‘Unknown Pleasures’ era Joy Division like dislocated manoeuvres that litter about the aural battleground like primed tripwires), effervescent 80’s candy pop and mid 90’s girl punk brat pop all moulded and finely tuned as if to sound like a must have acutely honed and distilled mix tape plundered from your cooler older brothers record collection. Yelping and cooing vocals that sound not unlike a bastardised mutation of Lene Lovich, Honey Bane, Kate Pierson with shades of Lydia Lunch thrown in to set you off guard (just check out the bop inducing ‘Stuck Inside’); kooky 60’s stylised organs that could easily be the work of the Mono Men via Blondie after a brief sabbatical at 1313 Mockingbird Lane and obtusely frenetic spastic rhythms that appear to be the work of a bullish forging of forces between the Fall and the Raincoats whose sole aim it seems is to kick that dippy clever grin belonging to the B-52’s back to ‘Planet Claire’ or better still further (especially on the zig zagging austere glazed head burrowing hypnotic blank generation licks amid ‘Flex Time’).
Wilfully catchy there’s an urgency that bleeds from ‘Flex Time’ – all at once discordant but with a serious pop heartbeat and caustically infectious so much so in fact that you’ll keep checking in the mirror for the obligatory rash. This baby wears its Ramones meets Helen Love heart on its sleeve none more so is this apparent than on the throbbing two chord cutesy college pop of the tangy self tanning ‘Bye Bye Bye Bye Baby’ which perhaps offers the most immediately accessible moment here with its early Primitives aftershocks. Elsewhere there’s the superbly atonal edge parading about on the viciously smarting ‘Rotten’ replete with feistily needling chords that at the close rear up into a seizure inducing cauldron of festering pyrotechnics. Best of the set though is the rampant bitten by the boogie bug volatile ‘Dead Beat’ a lovelorn bitter sweet comic book pictorial bruised and battered by the furious onslaught of staccato riffing all cutely tripped off with an adorable teen angst chorus to weep for. I could go on but I think you’ve got the general gist of things by now – buy or prepare for peer piss taking.
Additional note – Shortly after completion of the album The Dials drummer Doug Meis sadly lost his life in a tragic car accident on July 14th. He was one of three passengers killed (lead singer Becky’s husband John Glick of the Returnables and Michael Dahlquist from Silkworm) in a collision occurring in Skokie, IL. The accident was the result of a motorist attempting to commit suicide by ramming at high speed into the back of the stationary car that was carrying the three musicians back to work after a lunch break. A woman responsible for the accident and who escaped from the carnage with just a broken foot is being held without bail and has been charged with three counts of first degree murder. Our thoughts go out to the family and friends of Doug, John and Michael. For further information please visit the memorial site at http://www.dougmeis.com
MARK BARTON
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