August 2018 | Top 5 Albums of the Month

IDLES smash the Top 5 List, Along with Two Debut Albums!

 

5) Muncie Girls – ‘Fixed Ideals’  – LISTEN HERE

This was the second album released by Exeter trio Muncie Girls. Working up to the album I went and listened to their debut record again just to see how this one measured up and it’s clear that ‘Fixed Ideals’ is a step further for the band. Their lo-fi riffs are brilliantly under produced giving a raw feel. The hard hitting tracks are opinionated and fun to listen to, with wild drums throughout. FULL REVIEW HERE.

 

 

Top 3 Tracks : ‘Jeremy’ , ‘Locked Up’ and ‘Bubble Bath’

 

4) Slaves – ‘Acts Of Fear and Love’ – LISTEN HERE

Over the past five years Isaac and Laurie have continued to grow and develop as a band while keeping their core sound – and this album they offered something a bit different. Of course you still have that raw aggression from the vocal delivery and tireless guitar riffs, but this album had something different which is shown in the song ‘Daddy’. Throughout the album you hear the bands wicked wit, which never gets boring and keeps the album at their high standards. FULL REVIEW HERE

 

Top 3 Tracks : ‘Photo Opportunity’ , ‘Daddy’ and ‘Magnolia’

3) Bad Sounds – ‘Get Better’ – LISTEN HERE

Bad Sounds debut album promised the World to us, from new and innovative sounds and limitless creativity, and they delivered. After a lot of build to it with ‘Wages’ and ‘Evil Powers’ the band really did had a lot to live up to, and it was a relief to hear they done just that throughout the album. Listening to the album is a complete joy, and will have you bopping around the room and whistling those sweet little hooks that they deliver with ease. FULL REVIEW HERE

 

Top 3 Tracks : ‘Wages’ , ‘How You Gonna Lose?’ and ‘Evil Powers’

2) Our Girl – ‘Stranger Today’ – LISTEN HERE

Since they announced their debut album I was waiting with high anticipation, as everything up until then had moved me and left a mark. From songs ‘I Like You’ to ‘Our Girl’ they had it down. With this release they managed to do that at numerous points in the album, with distant sound of ‘Being Around’ to the mumblings on ‘Two Life’, their sound just throws you around room, and it was everything that I wished for on this album. FULL REVIEW HERE!

 

Top 3 Tracks : ‘I Really Like It’ , ‘Being Around’ and ‘Our Girl’

1) IDLES – ‘Joy as an Act of Resistance’  – LISTEN HERE

IDLES completely blew us away last year with their debut album ‘Brutalism’ (Album Review Here) which seem to come out of nowhere. Now with expectation resting on their shoulders, it was interesting to see how the band would fair with a second album. The band proved that they did not suffer with second album syndrome, as they made an equally good, if not better, successor. Much like their first album it’s completely packed with piss and vinegar, and the band will not rest until they’ve got everything off their chest. An excellent listen which firmly puts IDLES as one of the best bands the UK have today, cannot wait for the third release! FULL REVIEW HERE.

Top 3 Tracks : ‘Never Fight A Man With A Perm’ , ‘Love Song’ and ‘Great’

That’s it for this Month, what did you make of the albums in the list? What would you have put in the Top 5? Let us know, in the comments below!

Enjoy!

Album Review | Slaves – ‘Acts of Fear and Love’

Slaves Deliver with their Third Album as their Originality Takes Over Again!

Every orifice of Slaves sweats the punk fever: wild eyes; knuckles white; words dripping in malice spat through clenched teeth, it’s an unmistakable diagnosis. The rapid release of their LPs Are You Satisfied? and Take Control firmly established their reputation as rabble rousers, with their vitriolic instrumentals and lyrics that – at the surface – scorned at the suburban status quo. The fundamental ingredients for the punk genre were there. These boxes ticked, Slaves were making punk palatable. Their catchiness, with earworm tracks that sounded nasty while still being something you wouldn’t be too ashamed to show your mother, had us blindly content that this was punk in its purest, sterling form. Slaves are not punk musicians – not punk, in that there is no provocation, nothing that can deeply disturb you to the point where every cell in your body wants to revolt against it, or revolt with it. They are pseudo-punk, warping the genre to their own ends. The spirit of punk felt absent. Their latest album ‘Acts of Fear and Love’ is the fulfilment of their statement of intent. Finally, it feels as if Slaves are not being angry for anger’s sake, but have produced a valid critique of the modern times. This time, they mean it.

The album opens with ‘The Lives They Wished They Had’, a tannoy-wielding mockery of the vapidity of today’s generation: “When you put your latest purchases on public display? / Is it praise you’re after? Or is it something more? / Like a desperate need for acceptance that you just can’t ignore?”. The guitarwork is sneering, culminating in a flare up of noise and fury, with Issac screaming “SLAVES! SLAVES!” over and over as the instrumental is in its death throes. This, you’ll think, this is what I came for.

‘Cut and Run’, the single that garnered the most interest before the release of the album, is sonically inferior. There is a very conscious stride away from their usual tantrum trope in this track, but it’s clear that their darts are missing the board. The sing-song bridges, cacophonous screeching and repetition of ‘Cut and Run’ is, quite frankly, exhausting to listen to. ‘Bugs’ is cut from the same cloth. “Another let-down generation”, Isaac complains; another let-down stock punk phrase.

For ‘Magnolia’, Slaves sharpen their knives for an attack on conformity: “Did you know, that 65% of UK homes contain at least one magnolia wall?” The magnolia wall is a metaphor for the nightmarish, bourgeois status quo. They force the image down your throat until the sight of a magnolia wall is enough to make you wretch. Their aptitude for taking something mundane and distorting it into a horror is one of the greatest merits of Acts of Fear and Love.

Midway through the album is perhaps the most disconcerting track on it, ‘Daddy’ – but not for the reason you might expect. It’s the furthest thing from the typical stream of bile jetting out of the depths of their guts. It’s quiet; more than that, it’s deeply sad, causing you to jolt not from wrath, but from how utterly off-guard it catches you because it is so unlike anything you’d come to expect from Slaves. The guitar is still recognisable as the one you heard only a few tracks before, the medium for thrashing, youthful rebellion, yet here it is, tamed. It’s as if someone sat them down, and asked “Why are you so angry? Where did this come from?”. It’s a deep breath out; it’s a sigh of relief. A short lamentation of a father through the eyes of a child: “Wasted again on these late nights with strange men / Spending like it’s nothing ‘cause he don’t know how to make friends / But he’s trying so hard”.

‘Photo Opportunity’ is similarly out-of-kilter for their conventional repertoire. An acoustic guitar, playing an uncomfortable vaudevillian rhythm accompanies Isaac, bashfully stepping forward, asking quietly, “Hello, what are you trying to do to me?” It’s the obligatory attack on the media vultures that encircle the famous; every artist, beyond a certain point, feels the need to retaliate against them. Like a macabre carousel, round and round you go, until the chorus hits like a torrential downpour, the speed throws you from your horse, and Slaves, the ringmaster of this circus, is screaming bloody murder in your face.

Just when you think you’ve got Slaves pinned down, in Acts of Fear and Love, they’ve stripped themselves of their platitudes and run brazenly in the opposite direction. A bitter pill to swallow, perhaps, for fans who worship their previously anthemic, but conceptually stunted work; what Acts of Fear and Love lacks in catchiness, it compensates with original design. The final track of the same name profits from Slaves’ innate menace, with spoken-word verses charged with a stealth that is effective two-fold without the need for noise. This record is demonstrative of the fact that Slaves are more than one-trick ponies. They show glorious inconsistency, with almost every track illuminating a new side to the duo that is jarring in just the right way. ‘All talk, no trousers; all bark, no bite’: a perception Slaves have more than seen off – but until their versatility on Acts of Fear and Love melds with the snap of their previous albums, Slaves are far from done.

Words by Sophie Walker