Coffin Pricks – Group Home Haircut 7” EP (Stationary Heart)
RECOMMENDED
The most important thing here is that Chris Thomson is out fronting a punk band again. Normally this would be given to mean that anyone who’s ever liked any of the earlier bands he’s been in, particularly as a vocalist (Circus Lupus, Las Mordidas, the Monorchid, Skull Kontrol, Red Eyed Legends), would need to check out any new music he’s involved with – come on, you signed the pact, I saw some of your names on it. Three songs here, and they’re all spectacular, especially “Group Home Haircut,” which caught my attention from their Soundcloud page last year, and made my Top 10 singles without even having really existed in a physical format. It’s probably the most straightforward thing I’ve ever heard him in front of, but that’s why it rules – his voice contains the best angry Anglo snarl since ’77, a combination of Cockney guv’ner and Southern rustbucket coughing up bales of tawny, oxidized wire mesh, and instantly makes any band he’s with that much more intense. His enunciation isn’t all that far off from Mark E. Smith’s but it is the animosity in how he delivers a line that really clinches it. The song itself is somewhat of a departure, not trying to blind us with prog studdastep or baste us in hickory-smoked BBQ sauce, but the sort of even-handed, downpicked postpunk rocker you might hear out of Hot Snakes or Obits, who got it from the Wipers, who probably thought of it around the same time Wire made Pink Flag, so … yeah. For once it seems like a band of his can see what’s on the other side of this kind of music, when done correctly, and while it might take some of the surprise out of it (there’s nothing on the scale of, like, “New Tricks” or “I Always Thought You Were An Asshole” on here, at least not yet), it does seem like a more secure position to operate from after years of bands that split up too soon. I put this record on and end up playing it over and over, as I have listened to their live set on Epitonic through many a morning commute – knowing this sort of thing is happening again gets me pumped up for the day ahead. Still stationed in Chicago, Thomson teams up with a number of the more reliable musicians in that town (Ryan Weinstein, late of Cavity and others on guitar; Chay Lawrence on bass; Jeff Rice on drums) and they just lay these three out so well, giving the tracks on the B-side enough speed to make a passed-out drunk snap to attention. 300 copies, get ‘em fast, these won’t last. (http://www.stationaryheart.com)
(Doug Mosurock)
