The minimal arrangement, off balance timings and heavily compressed sounds of Young Marble Giants, The Feelies or The Embarrassment are the very definition of new wave and I haven’t heard it expressed recently as punk as F’ke Blood on this single from Italy Records. Not a new release by any stretch it looks like the Detroit band last logged into their myspace in 2011, and this single was out a good three years before that, but their facebook has photos of a possible new release on Urinal Cake? Looks like this single caught the attention of the other Detroit based label who organized a full length of this cool material which I’ll be looking for based on these two tight, manic tracks.
A-Side" Water Wings" has all the post punk nervousness, jittering chords and high pitch nasal whine of a band trapped in a tin can. The burst of bass guitar, weaving around this groove seems to jab in every measure. The phaser-y vocal in Devo style, their guitar goes from hardly brushed to a slappy, rigid, timed out beat. Fragments of a sweater unwinding, the literal plinks of a guitar are just cool and weird. Musically describing those jerky movements alongside this punk vocal is a perfect balance of all those minimal elements. There’s a menace in this being inhumanly rigid while Steven’s vocal goes the opposite way entirely. Even this solo, which should be a letting loose, is strict chords in successive stabs to the gut. The rest of the band comes in over the main vocal in jittery off beat time like the Buzzcocks. A creepy post modern mess of ‘I bet we have no choice but make a song out of this.’ Here's the formula boys just add cool frantic energy.
B-Side "The Band that Bled Real Blood" adds a broken cowbell to a 1,2,3,4 beat. Even less instrumentation this time, the chorus getting a little loose or Go Go's bubbly fun with vocals from Marcie. Steven’s high pitch in that PIL style while the guitar and bass lead this pop band section. It's a cool punk melody where they capture this loop and build higher and higher with shallow echo and a breaking change into chorus. Before they were just playing with the possibility and now it’s thin and barely cracking the peaks and valleys of the recording. The guitars are percussion elements, a scratch, a smacking hit, bizarre unnatural scrapes on the metal wound strings. I love this jarring mental sound, drilling into your head with all the charm of a well dressed mannequin.
Get this from UFO factory or XRecs or Italy, on black vinyl.
This is off their upcoming full length, check out the tracks from this single over at their myspace.
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