The Open Mouths are two guys from East London who come across more like cabaret than a band. Making music in their bedroom, they’re a bizarre amalgamation of the Buzzcocks and the Moldy Peaches. Taking simple songs and strumming barely-in-tune guitars, they then proceed to tell gratuitously potty-mouthed lyrical stories that are either funny or annoying, depending on how you feel about hearing little ditties about internet sex, domestic abuse and being nasty to your family. All with incredibly annoying American accents. Bah.

The sound is appropriately lo-fi for a couple of guys having some fun with playing some music – there’s some incredible bad production on the third song “Sadistic Top”, which features the grunge staple of a guitar and some soft drums in the verses before “kicking in” on the chorus with some really distorted guitar and clattering drums that should obviously be about twice the volume as the verse. Unfortunately here the “huge” guitar and drums are about half the volume of the instruments on the verse. Oh well. It sounds shit, but it’s kind of amazing as well. Which is pretty much what can be said about The Open Mouths as a whole. Pretty shit, but sort of good as well. Or great, but terrible too. Like a Roger Corman film, or a Poppy Z. Brite book. Or a really tangy kebab from a skanky takeaway. You may well find them to be a guilty pleasure.

www.brainloverecords.com

Posted: 09|4|05 at 2:47 pm. Filed under: record reviews.
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