records

Six By Seven - The Closer You Get [lp] Six by Seven’s new album has taken a new drift for them - they now ROCK! Well, some tracks (e.g. 'Eat Junk Become Junk', 'Sawn Off Metallica T-Shirt', 'Don’t Wanna Stop/Slab Square') are certainly more rock’n’roll oriented than before; there is still the same dark intensity we have grown to love from their first album ('The Things We Make'), as in one of the last singles, '10 Places To Die', and the tracks 'New Year', 'My Life Is An Accident' and 'Overnight Success'. Add to this the almost painfully beautiful 'England' and 'A Broken Radio' as it slowly but surely disintegrates into feedback, by which time you get around to remembering to breathe. The almost drum’n’bass influenced 'Another Love Song', which seems driven by James Flower’s graceful Hammond organ, whilst being hurried along by the snare of drummer Chris Davis and the rhythmic pulse and Paul Douglas’s bass, before the huge guitars of Sam Hampton and Chris Olley crash in and remind us that rock has tunes as well as rhythm, unlike most of what I’ve heard in drum’n’bass. The 2 guitarists complement each other so well, both on record and live, that you could believe them to be one person on twintrack - and this is evident throughout this glorious record. I’ve seen a review that said the album’s tracks were all the same - hah! With drum’n’bass, straight rock, punk (on 'Slab Square' they outdo the Pistols), darkly brooding rock, and the odd slower one which at first sounds nice, until you take in lyrics like "it just looks bad, drawing a knife through my neck" ('One Easy Ship'), how can you say its samey? Quite wrong - this is one of those splendid records that sounds better after 20 plays than it did after 10; and after the tenth you were in love with it anyway. And it’s the only record so far this year to be able to remove Seafood’s 'Surviving The Quiet' from my CD player. 9/10 DaveM