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June 12th, 2006 by Eric K (Permalink)
Label: XL Year: 2006 Add Comments |
Of late, IndieCult has become somewhat disillusioned by The Rock (that’s the musical institution, not the cabbage-faced wrestler-cum-“actor”). Pile after steaming pile of cd-rs from PR companies peddling their latest “The New Libertines” or worse (and far more frequent than one might imagine) “The New Oasis”. And let’s not even get started on that genre we call Post-Rock which has become as bloated and stagnant as John Prescott after a night sampling the vindaloos down Kensington High Street. Instead we’ve been forced to find musical satiety from other sources, thrown out into the scary worlds of the experimental sound-artiste, “World Music” and (whisper it) Free-Jazz. But having spent the last months torn between listening to the processed sound of plastic surgical instruments and beetle activity under a tree in New York (seriously!) there was always the feeling something was missing. This music, conceptually interesting as it may be, was missing the thing that Rock music once, in more innocent times, incited in us. We’ve all known it: the feeling of rebellion, subversion, raw power – the feeling that you are young and could change the world if only you turn the amps up loud enough and scream with as much passion as you can muster. But these were distant memories, like some idyllic childhood spent running through fields of daffodils with daisy chains in our hair, now lost to old age and the RIAA. And then, all of a sudden, as we lay face-in-pillow wondering what the point of it all was, the glow of the moonlight peeking through the curtains dropped to a darker hue and an ominous click sounded out from the stereo shuffle-function. A monstrous wrench of guitar squall threatened to blow the Bang & Olufsens clean off the shelf: “I’m an independent motherFUCKER!!” screamed some possessed harpy as we scrabbled to regain balance. And here it was. All the fury of alienated youth that was missing from the prepared-pianos and shortwave radio frequency-manipulations, was now threatening to tear our ears off and force-feed them down the throats of the naysayers. So yes, Be Your Own Pet have something of a spark about them. Never mind the musical lack of sophistication or the 5th-form poetry and listen to the way Jemina Pearl spews out these lyrics like she’d been raised on a diet of red meat and smarties (just the blue ones). At our certain age, we may still have too much cynicism and lethargy to fully embrace a noise we’ve all heard before but to any teenager out there whose pissed off at the hand they and others have been dealt by this cruel world these guys are salvation.
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