Hurrah!
Posted: October 11th, 2004, by Stuart FowkesHurrah! I bought some 7″s last week, and have just got around to giving ’em a listen. And three cheers for vinyl with good things etched thereon, they’re both grand. That I’m a fan of London-based Italians Querelle should come as no surprise to anyone who’s read this, but I’d only previously heard them live. ‘Invisible’, their contribution to this split with The Dudley Corporation is a crystalline and affecting, if brief, tug on the ol’ heartstrings. The guitar and bass lines snake around each other like prime Unwound, while there’s more than a shade of Blonde Redhead about the song’s emotional resonance. Warm and comforting like your favourite person on a cold day. On the flip, the Corpo throw out ‘Safety Shot’, which starts off a bit more lightweight. Coming over like an extremely well stitched-together patchwork of flighty pop and rousing emo, it doesn’t really get going until the guitars decide to show us what they can do in the final third, and then it’s all over too quickly, just as we were gettin’ into it.
There’s nothing like the familiar feel you get from holding a lush, properly produced heavyweight single in your hands, and the latest offering from Vacuous Pop is that esteemed label’s best offering since the first Cat On Form 7″. Help She Can’t Swim are a delirious collision of The Fall and Huggy Bear, all spiky urgency and yelping invective, but without forgetting that – hey! – we wanna dance too. Raucous, exhausting and brilliant, ‘Knit 1, Pearl 1’ smacks you in the gut and runs off with your sweets, and then gives way to a more considered second track in ‘My Favourite Lay’, which bizarrely sounds a bit like Bratmobile playing an early Placebo song. ‘Are You Feeling Fashionable?’ sports a terrace chant about erstwhile indie rag Melody Maker, and actually sounds a bit like Leeds riot grrl types Coping Saw – a good thing in my book. Sure, you can hear where Help She Can’t Swim have come from, but where they’re headed is far more exhilarating.
The further info bit:
Bands:
The Dudley Corporation
Querelle
Help She Can’t Swim
Labels:
Vacuous Pop
Big Scary Monsters
Stuart Fowkes
Stuart is possibly one of the tallest people you have ever seen. He towers above your puny skyscrapers like Rodan on steroids, his blonde spikes puncturing the atmosphe re like crazed, gelled knives. In real life he is part of the Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element pop outfit, and writes for other websites as well as this one - the cheeky blighter. He favours the noisier end of the musical spectrum, with a fervour which would seem to indicate a dodgy heavy metal past.
http://www.oxfordbands.com