Album Review: Desperate Journalist - "Maximum Sorrow"

 

One of those bands where you do find yourself questioning why they're not a bit bigger than they are, Desperate Journalist have been mainstays on the indie scene for close to a decade now and their heady brew of post-punk, goth and shoegazing has led to three very good albums with the band improving release upon release. It's fair to say that we've been quite eagerly awaiting album number four since it was announced a few months ago and now it's here.

It starts with the haunting skeletal keyboard lament of Formaldehyde which actually reminds me of Sinead O'Connor (in a good way) before swirling Cocteau Twins-esque lead-off single Fault kicks things into gear in good style. Indeed, there's plenty of songs here which show Desperate Journalist are still as good at the whole moody epics that they've made a name for such as the sprawling six minute Armageddon, the sinister Utopia and the spiky Fine In The Family. However, this is clearly a band who are growing and throwing a few curveballs into the mix - Personality Girlfriend has a rolling glam style drumbeat powering it along (think the Fall's Glam Racket or Carter's Glam Rock Cops) while the edgy six minute Everything You Wanted actually reminds me of Simple Minds' early (ie pre-stadium rock) stuff and I mean that in a good way I promise! The spiteful Poison Pen even sees them dipping their toes into political waters with some well aimed invective against holier-than-thou hate-spreaders.

It's to Desperate Journalist's immense credit that four albums into their career they're still putting out albums which sound fresh and challenging rather than sinking into the rut of just phoning it in. Maximum Sorrow is a good effort which is more than deserving of your attention especially if you're still unaware of this rather exceptional band yet.

Bandcamp

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

Garbage Days Revisited #90: Soho Roses - "The Third And Final Insult" (1989)

Image
  "If you won't love me then I'll find someone who will!"  - Soho Roses  - So Alone The Soho Roses were a classic case of right band, wrong time. If they'd broken on to the scene in the last few years then they'd have had a ready made audience on the 21st century power pop scene and probably be regulars at Some Weird Sin and similar club nights in the Smoke. The reality? They broke through towards the tail end of the '80s and got lumped in with the dying embers of the Soho glam scene, leaving behind one sadly underappreciated album and a few EP's before self-combusting. In a way, I sort of see the Roses as a British version of Enuff Z'Nuff. Not so much in terms of their sound but more of the fact that they were a group crowbarred in with glam who weren't really a natural fit there and kind of paid the price for it - I've always thought Enuff Z'Nuff sounded more like a Britpop band with flashbomb guitars than a hair metal band. Oh sure,
Read more