The Angel Brothers & Satnam Singh
From Punjab to Pit Top
It’s World Roots dub psychadelia from Yorkshire - an album of insistent instrumental grooves - sometimes uplifting, sometimes dark and unearthly. It’s a bit like wading through a deep rain forest under the light of the moon - drum songs swimming through the air amid rich textures of strings, tablas, saxes, distorted harmonicas, thumb piano’s, hurdy gurdy’s, throat singing, harmoniums, glocks and hammonds. Because there aren’t any songs the album sometimes leaves me hanging in the stranger places of my mind - the space and the depths of the arrangements conjuring up sound tracks to very odd flicks. Especially so for ‘Lost in the Loop’ - probably the darkest trip on the album - it drags you away into a bleak sky - the instruments talk to you in twisted tongues and you realise you better had go and make that cup of tea. All in all the album is not ‘sing around the piano’ music - that’s for certain, but if you sit back and clear your mind it might show you things……. (subject to imagination - while stocks last.)
Richard Masters
Pink Grease
Working All Day / Manhattan On Fire
Pink Grease are ace if this, their first single is anything to go by. The first thing you notice is how loud the thing is, many of the current crop of garagesque guitar bands seem to look to the clipped compression of late 70s NYC a la Television or Talking Heads. Pink Grease seem rooted a few years earlier in the messy rock’n’roll of the New York Dolls. Working All Day is a dirty scrawl of a tune with the best guitar sound Sandman’s heard in ages. It’s as if the band had crashed into your house and positioned themselves directly in front of the telly forcing you to listen. It’s got the kick and roar of motorbikes. The toe-treading Manhattan On Fire is even dirtier, underpinned by the kind of sax-playing that turns the player inside out. Top bollocks.
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Jack Tractor
Mains
My Angels
Set for release in Australia apparently, My Angels has some of the qualities of some of the older Oz bands, the ones not completely under the thrall of Mr. Cave. There’s the dustiness of The Triffids around the time of their ‘Calenture’ album. Mains seem to specialise in more straight forwardly rock/folk interpretations of country music (there’s also a hint of All About Eve in the female vocals) My Angels is solid enough fare, which emphasises the band’s musical abilities but sounds like the kind of thing which impresses promoters rather than punters.
Jack Tractor
One Small Life
Factor 8
One Small Life’s second single, and first on indie Kiss This, seems determined to demonstrate a range of sounds over its two tracks. Sandman also caught the band playing an acoustic set recently which sounded like another band entirely. Factor 8 chugs alongs nicely enough without ever quite igniting into something more memorable while Spinning is a plaintive piano led ballad which just about stands up to be counted. The problem seems to be an over reliance on versatility at the expense of a recognisable individuality. Not bad, not great.
Jack Tractor
New Releases
The Angel Brothers & Satnam Singh
Pink Grease
Mains
One Small Life
November 2002
S002