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The guitar player is a cheerful looking cove - he plugs his instrument through an amp into two full range PA speakers stacked on top of each other, the sound that comes out is a scaly Albini-esque approximation, but does he play the usual low percentage melody, scratchy, hacking, asthmatic Albini schtick? Does he fuck! Instead he actually writes *gasp* proper melodies, proper thought-out, brilliant cascading guitar lines. The other two members provide the math/skronk factor especially bass player Nathan, a disturbing figure who pumps out Talking Heads meets Mike Watt meets Les Claypool (in the best way) style bass parts. It's so refreshing to see a band not following the usual patterns set out by our friends from Chicago, but still using the same instrumentation and dynamics. Solway Fifth sometimes remind me of the fantastic way that bands like The Minutemen and Meat Puppets were unafraid to just jump on a brilliant melody line, supercharge it with some punk rock attitude and then take off for the Moon. This is like Math without the obligatory dissonance, Punk with a rocket sled and a luminescent hat on, Hardcore made by really brainy animals that dig old 80's SST bands. When they do push the skronk overdrive calculus button, which is every now and again, the components are still all interesting and thankfully Spiderland-free. My only concern is the slow track near the end was a little too much like a slow track near the end, but it was still pretty good and not the wishy-washy, musically unresolved post-cock meanderings that we've all gotten used to. I guess I just wanted more rawk! Along with Oedipus, Ursa and the like, these guys deserve your attention, there is a split single coming out sometime soon on Bearos records, go see! Santa Dog |