Never let it be said that a band's decision to play fast and loud masks a lack of finesse. An album like ‘Nothing Gives’, the debut LP by London-via-Leeds punk trio Slowcoaches, performs a thousand melodic tricks at a hundred miles an hour, which is just as hard as it sounds.
Landing somewhere between the gobby brilliance of peak Elastica and the driving, hi-hat punishment garage rock of the Marked Men, it delivers on the early promise of the band's first singles by engineering as many collisions between sugary hooks and squalling distortion as possible in half an hour.
Vocalist and bassist Heather Perkins has a louche drawl that adds the right amount of disaffected cool to proceedings and makes it all the more enjoyable when a song like Living Out, the opener, slings a massive refrain into the mix after a rollicking start.
Similarly, guitarist Matty Dixon can't help dragging the ragged fuzz of We’re So Heavy into a pleasing shape during its verses, while 54 trades in solid chunks of noise and a twisting melody that in another life might have piqued the interest of Japandroids.
Perkins’ often deadpan delivery retains an agitated air, with her lyrics balanced on a precipice between anxious and (on an interpersonal level) nihilistic. Rarely has the line “We’re the same” felt so empty and cutting as when Perkins immediately follows it with “It's a drag, yeah.”
‘Nothing Gives’ is on one hand a thrashing brute of a record, but on the other it's nuanced, introspective and catchy as hell.
Slowcoaches Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Mon December 05 2016 - BIRMINGHAM Sunflower Lounge
Tue December 06 2016 - HULL Sesh at Polar Bear
Wed December 07 2016 - LIVERPOOL Maguires Pizza Bar
Thu December 08 2016 - GLASGOW Hug and Pint
Fri December 09 2016 - LEEDS Brudenell Games Room
Sat December 10 2016 - LONDON Lexington
Sun December 11 2016 - BRISTOL Louisiana
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