Album Review: Pet Needs - "Fractured Party Music"

 

Signed to Xtra Mile recordings, Colchester's Pet Needs are another band who could probably be best described as "post-Idles". And in recent months, that genre has seen some great bands (Girls In Synthesis) and some unremarkable ones (TV Priest) spring up in almost equal measure.

Pet Needs, I'm happy to report, definitely veer more towards the former - tracks such as the opening one-two of Outline and Tracey Emin's Bed definitely pack the necessary fight-or-flight anger brought on by smalltown psychosis while the juddering Sympathetic Accent Syndrome is the sort of thing you can see igniting moshpits in the live arena.

It's this anger which keeps Fractured Party Music on the right side of good. Unlike some bands who use the "post-punk" handle as an excuse to throw out deliberately obtuse tunes which fail to grab your attention, there's a real rabid fury in here which grabs you by the throat and refuses to let you go on the likes of Overcompensating and Roses while songs such as Pavlovian pack in enough memorable hooks to make this sort of stuff stick in your mind, often a problem for bands of this genre. The desolate acoustic-led While The Spin Cycle Span which deals with the frustration of low-paid manual labour (almost like a 21st century rewrite of the Creation's old '60s garage rock number Painter Man) is a real curveball as well and works all the better for it, likewise the Frank Turner-style folk-punk of Scratchcard and closer Embers.

Frustrated, angry, scared and fearful for the future, Fractured Party Needs is a soundtrack for those hitting their post-school years and realising that the future ain't necessarily all that they told you it was gonna be. Well suited to the current torrid political climate, it's definitely worth a listen.

Bandcamp Link

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)

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