I've accepted a challenge from Georgia Tazda to post over ten days ten reviews I have written: no explanation, no comment, no explanation, just the review. I nominate The Beatles.
GREEN HANDS/ SEEDS OF DOUBT/ RODENTS/ JEFF, Divine
Schism, The Library, 9/7/18
Jeff are a new duo making an unhoned punk clatter, a
clarion for anyone who’s ever wanted to stick on a Buffy T-shirt and sing a noisy song about “not wanting to grow
up”. Are they any good? Not really.
Does it matter? Not a jot.
Rodents pull off the trick of sounding taut and honed,
whilst being as loose as twenty year old Y-fronts. They sometimes sound as though someone’s
melting Tom Tom Club under a magnifying glass, and sometimes like a bunch of
woozy, late September wasps doing the Blue Orchids on Stars In Their Eyes. There
are moments of fizzing, Gedge-a-tronic guitar, but the high point in a set of pleasures
comes with a slow, rubbery groove, as if Fat White Family had swapped all the
sleaze for jobs at an owl sanctuary.
Their vocalist exchanges his laconic, Country Teasers
sneer to take the drum stool for Seeds Of Doubt. Their name sounds like the most disappointing
Dr Who story of the 1970s, and
lyrically they tend to paddle in the shallows of the underachiever, telling
drab stories of someone living on Hula Hoops, for whom the cafes at Harrods and
Sainsbury’s are equally out of his social reach. The music is all mid-paced chiming guitar and
mumbled vocals, a desiccated R.E.M. swapping southern gothic flourishes for a
prosaic drift of gold-buyers’ leaflets at a bus stop. It’s good, but better appreciated on record,
rather than in a sweat-drenched cellar.
It’s nearly eleven when Green Hands go onstage, and we’ve
lost about a quart of sweat. What we
need now is something uplifting and energy-spiked; what we don’t need is
something that moves from a slow, late 70s Dylan groove to the clunky horn-rimmed
pop of a slipshod Lloyd Cole. There’s
lots to like in their set, from a Neil Young spaciousness to melodically
mournful vocal, but we’re not convinced.
Then again, when people with such varied T-shirts as The Doors, Sleater-Kinney
and Belgian techno pioneers R&S Records – not to mention our Buffy-clad friend – are clearly loving
it, does it matter? Not a jot, we expect.
