Shelley Shome Mishtake

Another recent one. This is a record review from www.oxfordbands.com. It's fun writing for this site, which is a nice neat source of info, opinion and rampant argument, because you have a little more freedom than in a magazine: unspecified word counts, the chance to argue about your reviews online with the performers, carte blanche in general. Be nice if they paid me, though.

Record reviews are good because you don't have to leave the couch, but the onus is greater - you have to listen to every nuance & think about it, no excuses for missing anything as there is in the live arena. The reader knows you've had leisure to digest the recording, and you should reflect that with cogent thoughts about every facet of the record. That's the theory; I like to write about how crap the cover art is and then make some stuff up about the music and nip down the pub. Seems to work.

DIAL F FOR FRANKENSTEIN - DEMO

This demo comes on a Woolworth’s Worthit! CDR, which is just about as good a symbol of low budget, doomed effort as we can come up with. Luckily, Dial F For Frankenstein’s recording is far from a failure; in fact, it’s a cocksure burst of indie rock with plenty of potential and a scattering of neat moments and good ideas, that’s ultimately not got the songwriting ability to underwrite the evident promise.

Between the opening guitar part of “Substance”, which is rather wonderfully like Johnny Marr playing Bauhaus, and the authentic fuddlydumph that John Peel would identify as completing “Headcase”, there are individual enticing moments, but the tracks themselves are instantly forgettable. It’s a ripe, jaunty burst of – well, nothing much, really. Not unpleasant in the least, but they probably work better live than on record. The CD closer “Red Song” is better, with some wonderful vocals stuck between a listless squeal and reigned in raunch that immediately recalls the excellent performance on the debut Strokes LP, but it’s still ultimately half a song.

It’s left to “Remedy” to indicate what Dial F could really be capable of in the future. It’s built on a sprightly lurch between two frets, with a tastefully lofi vocal alleging “it’s 1995” – quite apposite, as the tune resembles like one of the better tracks from the second, less effete and mannered, wave of Britpop. The rhythm section stalks onward with a wonderful compressed energy, and when the (possibly ironic) exhortation comes in to “Dance, you fuckers”, we feel Dial F have got a fighting chance of getting their wish. So, not the greatest demo we’ve ever heard, but hugely encouraging al the same, especially for a youthful group – they’re playing neatly together, creating a well thought out, coherent sound and they have the makings of a vocalist who’s able to carry a song, even if he’s not likely to be swooping the octaves. (Why are there so few good singers around? We don't care what their range is, we just want someone with panache, a basic grasp of interpreting a lyric, an understanding of where their voice fits in the music, or at the very least a funny hat and an unhealthy impetus to act the giddy goat). The question is whether Dial F are able to develop the compositional chops to keep the energy going; we’ve no idea of the odds, but we look forward to finding out.