Sharp Ends – “Northern Front” b/w “Ghost of Chance” 7” (Hozac) / “Crack Traps” b/w “Loaded Hearts” 7” (Mammoth Cave Recordings Co.)
Remember when everyone was comparing Interpol to Joy Division musically, yet it was clear that the comparison was rooted in the band’s cutout-bin Peter Murphy-meets-Carlos D’s Flying Burrito Bros. Go To West Berlin! agenda? No? Good…let sleeping dogs lie. Or die. Interpol did the vocals of Starfish-era Church and the guitars of 90’s indie-rock, and nothing more complex than that. HoZac could release an album that sounds identical to Interpol and people would go apeshit over that joint, mark my words! My point is…with Interpol, all of the garage-punk knuckle-draggers locked into homo-baiting epithets on vocab auto pilot, just like they did in the ‘90s when faced with anything that didn’t have some topless bar stool barnacle on the album cover and a “raw” appropriation of the same worn-out Gories riffs ad infinitum. But the Ponys are accepted? I love the Ponys, but they sound like the Church (who I also love). Am I the only person on earth that finds it hilarious that some of these same retro-robots have now stripped off their racehorse-blinders and fully embraced music that would have threatened their manhood some 10 to 15 years ago? These days, there’s very few degrees of separation between a former Estrus intern and someone filling Slumberland’s pockets with the stuff that makes the world go round. What’s my point again? Sharp Ends’ 7” on HoZac sounds IDENTICAL to the more rocking tracks from Turn On the Bright Lights, and the parties involved want you to believe that the single on Mammoth Cave Recordings is influenced by The Fall or No Wave, but I’m going to go with GoGoGoAirheart if you don’t mind. In case listeners feel like these records have more teeth or might be grittier than the influences or source material I’m claiming, step back and consider that “crappier production values” isn’t the same thing as “more teeth” or “grittier”. Would you believe that I really like one song off of each 7” (the A-sides)? Of course I do, because I’ve always dug stuff like this. I dug it when it when Coral, Candy Machine, Trenchmouth, Circus Lupus, etc did it, I dug it when Monorchid/Skull Kontrol, The In/Out, and Pavement did it, and we could keep climbing the ‘90s chronological tree and enter the last decade with strength and quality, but I keep having bad memories of a guy in a Rip-Offs t-shirt standing behind me in line at a to-remain-unnamed record store in Chicago and whispering “art-pussy” in reference to my stack of Siltbreeze and Slumberland purchases. Tunes have changed … tunes have changed. (http://hozacrecords.com) (http://mammothcave.bigcartel.com)
(Andrew Earles)
