Long players are fine and dandy. The Galoshins LP is a case in point for the defence.
Long players are fine and dandy. The Galoshins LP is a case in point for the defence.
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I don’t always get what the fuss is with releasing an EP, or a track a month; I understand that the ideas behind this modus operandi are the current flavour; time is short (or so we are told), and people’s attention spans are getting shorter, miserable stuff like that. All this autosuggestion would have you believe that we wore our curiosity like an iron band on our foreheads, cramped, ever tightening, irrevocably crimped into place. And it’s all such piss and wind. Time remains the same and you know what? Long players are fine and dandy. The Galoshins LP is a case in point for the defence.
Originally released as two separate EPs, the band have now decided that EP1 and EP2 should be packaged together as one long drawn out scream, and they’re quite right to do so: boy does it hit home. The whole thing just gets better and better as a listen, and by the last two tracks, Dehydrated Sun and Get Me Out of This Whole, the whole concern is in serious danger of getting anthemic and well, almost meaningful, maaan. Just goes to show, good things come to those who stick it out.
Musically, it’s a jumble of all sorts of things, and you’ll be thinking of lots of antecedents I’m sure, but there’s a fair bit of good old fashioned showmanship detectable in the way tracks drop off and try to get all soulful or weird on you, just for effect: it’s all very SAHB in that respect. It’s incredibly itchy music too, ants in their pants for sure: Bleeps sort of welds the riff from You Really Got Me and a sort of Rats on Rafts-style wig out into a loud brawling charge; whereas the pace and texture chops and changes maniacally in tracks like Devil In Us, The 4th Chord or Chank. If you’re in need of reference points in this whirlpool of clanging guitar and yelped vox, then we can pick out the reedy Seeds/Teardrops organ sound that pins down a number of the tracks, especially the first few, such as Shake Up and B2. We mentioned Alex Harvey earlier, and maybe the guitar rattle has something of Malcolm Ross or Doll by Doll as well.
What else prof?
Well, it’s all a bit trippy too; Fly On You is the first marker in that respect with its organ and pedal effects – nodding to the Monks before it settles down to be a charmingly underpowered psychobilly burn out, Vic du Monte style. Mink starts to pick up the garage vibe with some splendidly inept riffing driving it ever on, we are entering Litter/Watchband territory now, and this increasing trippiness is really marked by the last batch of tracks which made up EP2: B15 is a marvellously tinny take on Suicide, and as we said earlier Dehydrated Sun and Get Me Out of This Whole start to stretch out their sound into new pastures.
A great release, truly. The sort of thing you’ll play over and over again.