Here we go kids gather around it's time for another release from Almost Ready Records, this one from Thee Spivs sounds like it should be on their Last Laugh reissue imprint, but noooooo, these guys just got together like 5 years ago...in the UK, you dummy, and I'm hooked on their stripped down garage-y pop ways. I think I got a little too comfortable not looking farther than Nashville for the pop punk, and this is reminding me of the rest of the freaking world...like what happened to the french punk stuff that was happening not too long ago on Les Disques Steak? These guys are holding it down overseas and reminding me about that punk history.
A-Side's, "It's True" has the most raw energy, somehow it stays stripped down and raw as hell but with a big, really full sound. The crashes are still just peaking out, but there's lots of low end....I think it's just a weird sound to have the best of both worlds like this, the separated lows but still dabbling in the low-fi gunkyness that is just classic punk...building on those roots, not reinventing anything, but unpretentiously looking back at that era again, borrow and build. This three piece delivers on what I'm hearing about their live energy, getting it down on this record. When they count it off, it explodes, every verse from Ben Edge is matched by the rest of the band, back and forth, the classic call and response, paying homage to everything I've ever heard coming from this part of the world in the late '70s.
When a single can capture a performance like this, and elude to a tiny sample of what they must be like live, it's going to make you want to catch them live or immediately after the show you go find the merch table...that's the point of the 7" format. Making even more sense when looking back at what this sound is paying homage to.
"Taped Up" is another study in being able to straddle this solid, put together/spontaneous, raw sound. Keeping it short, they power chord away the punk, getting poppier this time.
I wanna go home / but it's taped up.
I get the feeling these guys had some experience with the police tape, the fact they would write about that says something. There's a surfy 'oh yea' chorus stuff that's really glamming up this track, make a party out of the beach ghetto sound. I can't help but hear the Clash or The Adverts here either. They're really working in the footsteps of all those classics, and headed there themselves.
Get this one from Almost Ready records.
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