In this access-all age of music and the near-constant enhancing of the status quo into rather narrow criteria, it’s not constantly possible to come across something that captures you off guard. Hearing something that attempts to do things a little in a different way can be disconcerting or disturbing. It’s those outsider peripheries where the more intriguing boundary-pushing acts are most likely to be discovered. And it’s specifically where Shake Chain hang out.
Delicately dipping into the mischievously entitled Snake Chain might, at first, feel as if it’s barely transforming the wheel. The Fall-leaning post-punk stylings are completely perfunctory with an admirable energy and sufficient concepts to keep over-eager fingertips from tapping onward. The album opens with distorted recordings of a violent tumult including Eastenders’ precious Stacey and Bradley. Pensive percussion scuttles around the soap dramatics whilst a Slint-esque guitar goes roaming in the middle of low bass vibrato. It’s either among the most painful 4 minutes of prime-time show television or it’s been patched together from different occasions. Obviously I do not understand my ‘Enders tradition all right to inform it apart.
When Kate Mahony’s vocals butt in throughout 2nd track ‘RU’, nevertheless, things move sideways. The most precise description of her voice that I can summon is if you think of Diamanda Galás consistently carrying out the “ I desire out” line from Fugazi’s ‘Complete Disclosure’ introduction in a selection of progressively screeching singing designs. Her falsetto drawl is a slurring damaging ball careening from syllable to vowel to ponderous whispers and banshee screams, continuing a family tree that cuts from The Slits, through Swimsuit Eliminate, into Sleater Kinney. It’s a welcome remedy to the male-centric lad vox of the majority of other post-punk acts.
Lyrically she’s a black eye too. Whether asking essential existential concerns such as “ Do we develop memory or does memory develop you?” and “ Exists a mouth in the middle of the desert?” or getting political, with tongue-in-cheek lines like “ The Very Best of British for individuals who belong” on the galloping ‘Second House’, she’s revealing concepts that could not be much better stated with a photo’s worth of words.
I was unnecessarily difficult on the 3 lads doing the musical legwork: they play as if the ground is falling away behind them. Their propulsive, forward momentum is the only thing stopping them from toppling into an ever broadening void. The frenzied energy of their staccato riffs on ‘Mike’, for instance, seems like the gritted jaw gurning and thought-jolts of low-cost base. Couple of tracks make it over the 3 minute mark. Deciding rather for a brief sharp blast instead of a steady burn. It seems like you get a taste of their live program on ‘Arthur’, in similar method as taking a jab to the face provides you the coppery taste of living.
The band likewise go all Brian Wilson on us with extended barnyard samples of cows and horses on a number of tracks prior to the chain comes entirely off on ‘Duck’s peaceful denouement. Like the curveball they are, Shake Chain zig simply when you anticipate them to zag, showing that there is such a thing as a jaggy snake.
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