[V] – [V]

The music for all four tracks is very much in the Joep van Son mould: hoe-down roots-pop, replete with a shuffling, juddering impatient beats and an angry jangle plonked on the top.

The music for all four tracks is very much in the Joep van Son mould: hoe-down roots-pop, replete with a shuffling, juddering impatient beats and an angry jangle plonked on the top.

http://waste-no-fun.tumblr.com/

An interesting project and one to keep your eye on if you like underground Dutch pop. Every six weeks a new song – recorded in a day – for Amsterdam mag hardhoofd.com. and a new drawing every time a song comes out. Golly… Is this what artists have to do to get any attention? The whole thing gets like some cut price Tin Pan Alley with increasingly desperate punters and salesmen every day. It’s dystopian I tell thee. Who knows, maybe it’s (shock) fun, even though you can also do lots of insufferably modern things like stream through Bandcamp too…

In any case this is interesting because the man behind [V] is the aforementioned Joep Van Son, the leader of the Sugarettes whose explosive LP, Destroyers of Worlds, this year should have you dancing in the aisles. Whilst this work is in no way as polished or as powerful as the Suggies’ LP, it’s always good to see what Van Son is up to. There arefour tracks up with the latest – Black Shades – featuring Vox Von Braun’s Wymer Vaastraa on guitar. The music for all four is very much in the Joep van Son mould: hoe-down roots-pop, replete with a shuffling, juddering impatient beats and an angry jangle plonked on the top.

These are more like raw basement recordings in the manner of Guided By Voices: high-paced sonic offcuts, rough-hewn and still raw round the edges. Everything’s pitched up high in the register and that little bit tinny: it sounds like you’re overhearing something being broadcast from a transistor radio. Charlie D is the best of the posted bunch, benefitting from a great, thick woozy chorus that’s redolent of Sonic Youth. Steady Hearts is an amplified busk, whereas Waste No Fun has slightly more oomph and a great driving tail out. The soon to be released Black Shades is a laconic stroll with a jaunty (accordion?) riff – the track benefits from some of Vaastra’s famed indolence, too.

So, you have your orders! Technology demands you keep checking back!