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Tags: native cats
The Legend! aka Everett True gushes about the Native Cats’ Process Praise lp in the Australian!
THE second album from Hobart-based electronic pub rock duo The Native Cats is superb.
It is dark, too: songs like the morbidly optimistic You Need A Driver are shot through with the sort of Gothic elan that served the early British post-punk bands so well. The minimal Self-Rep (the title surely a nod to Native Cats’ clear influence, Mark E. Smith of laconic beat-masters The Fall?) swirls with a sense of isolation and paranoia. Yet it never feels bleak, only welcome. That will be the influence of Hobart then, where wilderness nestles up to espresso machines. The electronica is rudimentary, but exploratory and fully realised. There’s humour, but even more so there’s awareness: Eyes Of The Gang is reminiscent of those heady sprawling early Rough Trade and Au-Go-Go days, the bass recalls the silence at the heart of Joy Division and Young Marble Giants.
The Native Cats are two men; label boss Julian Teakle on bass, Peter Escott on acerbic song: just two men, a drum machine and a keen sense of melody, but their sound could – in a better clime, with a stroke of magic – be as successful as Savage Garden. The melodies are way more memorable, the kitchen sink dramas endlessly re-liveable. Imagine a world where everyone was singing along with the deprecating The Singer is Dead to Me. Surely that would be worth living for?
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BOAWS <3s Dinamo Cambridge
from BOAWS, January 9, 2011:
Always having their feet somewhat submerged in the pool of indie-pop, Reports have seen a gradual shift from those straight forward numbers found on their first album to what has become a noticeably more garage and fuzz filled sound for this second LP Dinamo Cambridge. The single that preceded this album a couple years ago featuring the excellent “Bill Wyman Metal Detector” was a pretty good indicator as to the direction they were heading. For those that enjoyed that, well Dinamo Cambridge should hit the spot as it’s punched up some with healthier doses of noise and one that boils the songs down to the absolute essentials. Every song here keeps things quick and to the point while cramming in all the pop hooks that one could hope for. The only outlier is the interesting title track that runs roughly twelve minutes that makes good use of a droning organ as a backdrop for the track as it slowly gains steam over its hypnotic travel. For these guys the releases have been few and far between since their ‘07 debut, but those that have been following know that it’s been well worth the wait. Don’t sleep on this one.
Anyone interested in picking this one up would be wise to do so in a timely manner as I believe these are reaching the point of being nearly sold out with a pressing of only 150. They can be had currently over at Ride the Snake, who have been releasing nothing but quality for awhile now.
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Tags: art yard
Terminal Boredom loves the Art Yard 7″
Art Yard “The Law” 7″
More exceptional archival material from Ride the Snake, this time from Art Yard, post-Maps art-pop-rockers from early-Eighties Boston. These tracks originally appeared on a cassette comp from Propeller Records in 1981, with “The Law” being an obscure hit that garnered them some local/college radioplay/popularity, but as these things surely go, just as the band was picking up steam they broke up. “The Law”, a song I’ll cop to never having heard before, is quite an exciting find, a angsty-pop hit about depression that has a pounding backbeat and some post-punky nervousness to its hook. Reminds me of Suicide Commandos with some arty Mission of Burma touches. A song good enough to pay for on its own. “Something in Your Eyes” is a break-up tune with some more clever lyrics, the slower tempo allowing some time to focus on the angular guitar playing. Not as direct a hit as “The Law”, but still satisfying and a bit more challenging even. You should shell out for this one, as it’s a great “reissue” of a band that barely existed, but one you really should hear.(RK)
(Ride the Snake // www.ridethesnakerecords.com)
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