The Nite Songs Singles Bar - February 2021 Part 2 - EP’s and Mini-Albums

 

Yup, we're back in the ring for a second swi(n)g at the Singles Bar this month. We've had a few mini-albums land in the review box this week so we thought we'd use this particular column to give 'em a spin. Enjoy...

***

THE SPANGLES - “Boys Just Wanna Have Fun”

Featuring various off-duty members of the Idol Dead and the Main Grains, the Spangles first came to our attention a couple of years ago with the excellent SweetFA album and this four track covers EP featuring the band turning their hand to covering various female-fronted bands they look up to. Hence Joan Jett's Bad Reputation is turned into a glorious Ramones style thrashy singalong and Kim Wilde's Chequered Love has a nitro rocket strapped to its back to power it through.

The group also take on the Bangles' Walk Like An Egyptian (also covered by fellow Leodensians the Eureka Machines a few years back if memory serves me correctly) and turn it into a properly enjoyable romp while their cover of Transvision Vamp's I Want Your Love captures the sleazy energy of the original perfectly.

Covers EP's are always risky business but fair play to 'em, the Spangles have well and truly aced this and Boys Just Wanna Have Fun is an absolute riot from start to finish. Bring on that second album.

Bandcamp link

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)

***

THOSE FUCKING SNOWFLAKES - “Everything Is Absolutely Fkkkkd”

Hailing from Blackpool and signed to Louder Than War Records, Those Fucking Snowflakes are another of those post-Idles angry political post-punk bands. Similar to the likes of Dead Sheeran though, while their music may be somewhat off-kilter, their political anger is very much front and centre and it's this which makes what could have been an obtuse and unlistenable EP actually pretty worthwhile.

From the Boris-bashing Uncooperative Crusties via the well-aimed takedown of Dominic Cummings that is By The Power Of Barnard Castle and the anti-fracking tirade Caudrilla Can Fuck Right Off to the brilliantly named vitriol aimed at Robinson and Farage that is Mendacious Meddling Milkshake Recipient, Those Fucking Snowflakes bring to mind the strange image of Jello Biafra fronting Gang of Four and I have to say it's not an unpleasant sound at all. Like I say, it would have been very easy for this EP to sink into either outright unlistenability or to simply be lost in the post-Idles tidal wave a la TV Priest but these guys more than hold their own and Everything Is Absolutely Fkkkkd is well worth a listen.

Bandcamp link

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)

***

THE VAINGLORIOUS - “Delirium Tremens”

Hailing from London, the Vainglorious are the latest musical project of former Glitterati and Dedwardians and current Desperate Measures and Rich Ragany & The Digressions guitarist Michael "Gaff" Gaffney. I have to admit that this wasn't what I was expecting from him but the boy done good.

Opening track One More Lie is actually a tuneful slice of melodic rock complete with keyboards but it has a big soaring chorus not unlike Gaff's Digressions bandmate Rags which well and truly carries it through. A Common Mistake is similarly mid-paced and melodic before the dark You'd Die For No-One sounds like Nevermind era Nirvana covering Ride's Unfamiliar but there's no denying it works before the chugging riff of Senseless, the heaviest track on here, signs this one off well.

Gaff's done a good job here and it proves that as well as being a skilled guitarist that he's a dab hand at songwriting as well. Delirium Tremors is definitely well worth checking out.

Bandcamp link

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Garbage Days Revisited #74: Silverfish - "Organ Fan" (1992)

Image
  "You can't kill what you're afraid of...are you afraid of me?"  - Silverfish  - Big Bad Baby Pig Squeal I guess the obvious place to have written something on Silverfish would have been in one of the very early Sounds From The Junkshop but I'm ashamed to admit that they were a band who, while I was sort of aware of their presence at the time, I wouldn't really properly discover until well after they'd split.  I can remember the band name from the occasions they'd pop up on the Indie Top 10 on the ITV Chart Show but it was only when their singer Lesley Rankine cropped up as a guest vocalist on Therapy? 's Troublegum album (on Lunacy Booth  and Femtex ) that I decided to try and investigate their output in a bit more detail. Only to find they'd literally split up a few months before. Bugger. Silverfish hailed from Camden in the pre-Britpop days back when it was still the grimy scuzzy end of North London and the sort of place tourists would act
Read more

Garbage Days Revisited #29: The Quireboys - "Homewreckers And Heartbreakers" (2008)

Image
  "I played my hand in a rock 'n' roll band, it was my ace, my jack and my king/I rolled the dice to see what Lady Luck would bring, salvation or sin..."  - The Quireboys  - One For The Road In a way, I'm quite surprised I haven't covered the Quireboys either on Sounds From The Junkshop or here on Garbage Days Revisited yet. Unlike a lot of bands who were slung in with the "hair metal" tag in the late '80s and early '90s, I actually was  aware of the band when they had their brief flirtation with chart success around the turn of that decade and had a couple of their singles in my collection - Hey You  on a Now compilation (which sounds incredibly incongruous all these years later!) and There She Goes Again/Misled  on cassette single. For whatever reason though, they never quite became the firm favourites of mine that their fellow Soho dwelling glam rockers the Dogs D'Amour did. I'm not quite sure why - I think I just thought the Dogs
Read more

Sounds From The Junkshop #26 - The Supernaturals

Image
  "In the great scheme of things, it doesn't matter. I'll get through it a little bruised and battered. And maybe some day I can just laugh at myself..."  - The Supernaturals , Pie In The Sky , 1997 Written off at the time as the point where the Britpop movement essentially ate itself whole and paved the way for alternative music to get a lot more serious and dark and a lot less fun under Thom Yorke, the Supernaturals are, to my mind, a band who deserve re-appraisal. Or at least their debut album does anyway. After that, they kind of lost their way a bit...but we'll come to that later. I first heard of the band when their first Top 40 hit Lazy Lover  (ironically one of the weaker songs on their debut album) cropped up on a Shine compilation back in the day (ah the joys of 1996). It didn't really grab me but the follow-up The Day Before Yesterday's Man  did and this was the one which did reel me in. The Day Before Yesterday's Man  is pretty much the Sup
Read more