the horrors

hence my love for bands such as the cycle shorts wearing age of chance, the fishnets and wig chaos of sputnik, right down to the plastic hats of devo.

so when the new album by the non-colourful the horrors dropped on the mat with that deliciously arch reference to old recording methods that used to be branded on old 7″ singles, is on the spine of the album cover i couldn’t help but fall in love.

with a cover shot that directly connects to 70s cross dressing glammed up garage rockers new york dolls, it’s fairly obvious that these new upstarts know their rock-n-roll history. a fact thats doubled up with the opening cover version of screaming lord sutches jack the ripper. but hey, enough of the aren’t we cool rubbish.

after all, this band are now major funded, someone could have quite easily have dreamt this whole schtick up in good old fashioned malcolm mclaren style, but if that were the case, i’m not so sure that the actual music would end up sounding quite as rough and nasty as these 12 songs do.

the anti-coldplay band for the dissatisfied youth of 2007, which as the album is subtitled psychotic sounds for freaks and weirdos’ makes perfect sense.

for all the fashionista cool media storm that the band have whipped up, and the adulation that they command from their very young audience, i personally think this is a great 40 minute blast of hammon organ excess, garage rock-n-roll noise and grotty attitude, making this a delightfully enjoyable alternative to the safe and radio 2 friendly likes of the yawnsome kooks, razorshite etc etc.

basically, if i were 17 and brought this album home and played it loud, i just know my parents would be appalled, and that in my book is a result.

of course, old’uns will be able to make all the comparisons to such goth-punk classics by the damned, the cramps, the birthday party, of course, this is a bunch of well educated art students having a muck about with a dash of black eye liner and well trodden paths of stylised shock tactics, but hey, it’s only rock-n-roll and when the noise is as messy and tune filled as this then i cant but help and shoutout i like it.