-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal *
Artist..: Lola Colt
Album...: Away From The Water
GENRE....: Psychedelic Rock
STYLE....: Spaghetti-Western-Noir-Pop Crossover
LABEL....: Fuzz Club SCENE.....: 2016-02-19
BITRATE..: 259 kbps avg STORE.....: 2014-00-00
ENCODER..: LAME 3.98.4 -V0 TRACKS....: 10
SIZE.....: 89.36MB SOURCE....: CD
URL..: http://www.lolacolt.com/
- TRACKLIST
1 Rings Of Ghosts 5:27
2 Heartbreaker 4:00
3 Driving Mr Johnny 4:12
4 Highway 4:03
5 Moonlight 5:14
6 Vacant Hearts 4:29
7 Storm 3:58
8 White Horse 3:43
9 I Get High If You Get High 4:46
10 Away From The Water 7:59
Total Playtime: 47:51
Like some moody, widescreen western hybrid of the Gun Club, PJ Harvey and
Jefferson Airplane, the debut album by this London sextet rolls wall-eyed and
black-lipped over the horizon. Singer Gun Overbye has a dagger in her voice,
albeit one wrapped in a velvet sheath, and a movie show of stylish noir
violence constantly playing in her head. And with a gang of five behind her
to bring that film to life, Lola Colt's relatively well-populated line-up
means they're never short of instrumentation or colour, even if that colour
is always black, with slashes of red.
It could too easily be an exercise in clichΘ, in borrowed, threadbare style
covering an embarrassing lack of substance. But Lola Colt are anything but
one-dimensional, and avoid easy categorisation where so many bands positively
cry out for it, jumping into a heavily-labelled box and passing you the tape
to seal them in. Lola Colt may have spent hours practising their moves in
front of a mirror, but then they surely smashed that mirror to a hundred
pieces, and this album is that fractured, multi-faceted reflection.
Defiantly dark but cruelly seductive, the chemtrail guitars and tribal drums
of 'Rings Of Ghosts' are vaguely psychedelic in the purely narcotic sense,
evoking sunblind desert peyote trips and, with haunted organ emerging from
tangled barbed wire feedback at the song's coda, the Doors of Apocalypse Now
via the Sonic Youth of Bad Moon Rising. 'Heartbreaker' suggests the drive and
pulse of the Black Angels, except that, while you sense the Austin band are
too cool, or too stoned, to get worked up about much of anything, Lola Colt
have a better understanding of dynamics and emotional expression, and sound
genuinely agitated as a result. 'Driving Mr Johnny' reminds me of a
smoke-hazy Savages, with its yelping tension and unravelling nerves, its
thousand-yard stare and wailing coyote guitars. And while 'Highway' flirts
with cod-Morrison clichΘs- "I'm a gypsy walking to the highway" indeed- it
runs its tribal shaman shtick through a post-punk filter and comes through
slow and jagged, like a fragment of cooling steel moving gradually towards
your heart.
Reviving the goth mandolin on 'Moonlight', Lola Colt sail into dark waters
out beyond the Bunnymen archipelago, as slide guitar carries us far from that
northern kingdom and over the equator into sweatier climes, with riffs sharp
and narrow enough to go surfing on. Similarly conjuring northern English city
streets tapering off into the mid-western desert, previous single 'Vacant
Hearts' chimes like the Chameleons in ten gallon hats, galloping on horseback
towards Death Valley as confederate marching drummers bring up the rear. It's
hard to know how much revered producer / musician Jim Sclavunos (Bad Seeds,
Cramps, Sonic Youth, Lydia Lunch etc.) has brought to the table, but to
describe his work as sympathetic does him the bare minimum of justice. The
slow build of 'Storm' is a perfect example of the sonic space he's created
around the band; all spring reverb and dry drums, the buried, resigned male
vocals shadowing the impassioned female lead, the picture filled in with
tolling bells and a virulent, distorted undertow.
Each song on Away From The Water shifts through distinct stages; just as you
think you've got it pegged, it moves on to a different scene. Brief chapters
switch from one viewpoint to the next, adding up to an abstract but
consistent narrative rather than repeating verses or choruses, or the
too-easy trick of maintaining a constant heavy drone. The only constant here
is change; a fervid restlessness as every song struggles forward at torpid,
fever-crippled pace, urgent and almost frantic but held back by the steady
pulse of the hypnotic slave drum. Lola Colt keep moving but in
ever-decreasing circles, bound on a long, dried-leather leash to an
implacable wooden post in the centre of their sound.
In the mid-80s, Alan Moore invented the character of John Constantine during
his run on DC horror comic Swamp Thing. A northern English, hip but haunted
working class occultist (and, we later learn, former punk singer),
Constantine was embroiled in Swamp Thing's 'American Gothic' sequence before
being launched into his own Hellblazer title. During that 1980s 'American
Gothic' run, I do not believe we ever saw Constantine listening to a Walkman;
but if he had, the music he'd have heard would, I imagine, have sounded very
much like Lola Colt.
-=- SHGZ -=-
P.S.
** Thanks ***
*** BCC FNT IPC SSR ***
*** For Knowing Where The Music Is At ***
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* NuHS we miss you! *
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