|
|
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bronson Powerhouse, 19 Aug 2004
Archie Bronson Outfit is a three-piece, and you can hear it. From the outset, the deceptively pretty-titled 'Butterflies', you never heard three instruments make so much noise. It's like walking between two wooden huts, one containing the loudest, rawest art-rock band on earth, and the other containing a self-seeking, thoroughly miserable street philosopher moaning through an industrial megaphone. Fur opens with a noise like a collapsing shanty-town, and the raw wall of sound does not let up for the entire 37 minutes of this astonishing 10-song debut album. The drums, supplied and supercharged by songwriter Mark Cleveland are a careening, cannonballing march of thumps. The bass, thumbed by singer Dorian, is fuzzy, fat and vibrating. The guitar, wielded like a jawbone by Sam, runs the gamut from sparkling disharmony to rugged, chugging rhythm to delay-soaked shivers of crisp noise. The vocals, laid deep in the mix, are heavily flanged and ruminative - more like a fourth instrument than a vehicle for the lyrics. But what great lyrics they are: a whole volume of Homeric topography. Desolate shorelines, mountains and islands populate these landscapes - vast scenes which shrink and expand with the pulsing music. They complement the playing and production perfectly, repeating refrains of deeply personal, albeit distressed longing: "When the seas were parting/So our house turned to stone" goes one verse of the magnificent centrepiece 'Bloodheat'. "There's no land or sea/That can retain me" goes the half-felt boast in 'The Wheel Rolls On', but it's soon shattered by the refrain, "You can bury yourself if it gets too tense". It's hard to think of similar artists to Archie Bronson Outfit. They're that rare, rare thing - a truly new sound. Fur certainly won't be to eveyone's taste, but the best albums never are. However, if you're looking for a brief, gigantic, furious, all-natural excursion into British art-rock blues, you simply cannot do any better than this.
|
~ Archie Bronson Outfit
~ Archie Bronson Outfit
~ Fleet Foxes
~ MGMT
~ TV on the Radio
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home