Boa War

Here's today's critmungous archive review. I've edited out the bit where I erroneously claimed that Linda Lusardi played euphonium.


HAMMER VS THE SNAKE – GOODS (LOSSLESS RECORDS)


We first came across Hammer VS The Snake at a University Battle Of The Bands, where they lit up proceedings by bringing some fizzy synth abandon to the MOR indie drudgery that had enslaved most other entrants. They didn’t win, because they were pretty bad musicians, but the concept was worth celebrating. Eighteen months on and things are much the same. HVTS have polished themselves up to a certain extent, but a whiff of the ramshackle remains.

Culpability for this lingering “not quite” air is best laid at the feet of the drummer, who probably wants to play with a lively punk funk twitch but comes across as a man who can barely hold a rhythm, so spastic is the result. It wouldn’t matter so much if he hadn’t mixed his snare at weapons grade level. Once past these percussive foibles moments of the material are quite decent, opener “Blame” proffering tinny synth buzzes and some classily incomprehensible Adam Ant yelping (do I hear the lyric “Shall I hiccough my cereal”? Is jentacular regurgitation what all the kids are into these days?) that’ll do nicely, thank you. “Watcha Need” has a shouted section that could make it a forerunner in the hunt to find a theme tune for a remake of Why Don’t You?, which is something we don’t get to write every day.

But when these quirky moments of intrigue pass, the songs as a whole do feel somewhat thin: mouth-watering keyboard spangs and rubbery vocals tend to give way to insubstantial wanderings that bring to mind a lukewarm Hot Chip. Final track “Life And Times” is a simpler guitar strum that recalls Pluto Monkey, and that’s a pleasant change, but it’s too little too late. We need bands like HVTS. We need them to inject character into the often homogenous world of local rock music. We need them to highlight the tedium of most Battle Of The Bands entrants. We need their puppet-jerk music to make people dance like awkward animations. But we do need them to make better records if we’re ever to love them.

Etiquette To Ride

Tum ti tum...

THE DEBRETTS/ HAMMER VS THE SNAKE/ GEORGE PRINGLE – The X, 3/2/07


Diaristic takes of mild debauchery over trendily lo-fi laptop with the odd moment of little girl simplicity thrown in: hey, it’s Lily Allen Ginsberg! Rather, it’s George Pringle with her spoken tales of smoking, frustration and favourite records. We can imagine George sitting on a rumpled bed with a typewriter and hundreds of ashtrays, dreaming that a photographer from The Observer Magazine is snapping from the rafters, like any number of sophomoric hipsters, but she does have a certain something to offer: not least killer lines like “I’m going to kick that indie witch in the tits”. Ultimately George is a much better writer than performer or programmer, and it would be interesting to hear her read without accompaniment…and, err, a little more slowly.

Our recent brush with Hammer Vs The Snake’s recorded work was disappointing, but clearly their New York stutter funk needs to be experienced live. True, the first couple of numbers shared a failing with the EP, in that they couldn’t get going; “fragmented” is one thing, “disconnected” is another, and it’s only the singer’s horrific Giles Brandreth jumper that holds our attention. Given time, however, HVTS come through with cheap Devo gyrations and sly Beastie Boys smirks to unexpectedly win us over.

There’s a big difference between a vocalist and a frontperson, and Vonnie DeBrett is a textbook exemplum. She stalks, screeches, leaps, and – when the music demands it – even sings rather winsomely, holding the audience captive. When Vonnie’s on the prowl you forget the rest of the band.; then again, you probably wouldn’t notice them anyway as The Debretts play astoundingly mediocre new wave, pleasant but utterly anonymous. “You Can’t Fix It” is definitely the best tune, and that’s a cheap peroxide Blondie with little to offer. We’d love to love The Debretts, but they’ll have to write something first. Why not call George Pringle? She’s got loads of lyrics that she doesn't seem to know what to do with.