There is a restless intelligence at work here, and I don’t think it’s the sort of wilful and smug perversity that is often distressingly present in this sort of record.
There is a restless intelligence at work here, and I don’t think it’s the sort of wilful and smug perversity that is often distressingly present in this sort of record.
Help She Can’t Swim – The Death of Nightlife
(http://www.helpshecan’tswim.com/ http://www.konkurrent.nl/)
If noise is what you want… then noise you shall have. Opener Pass the Hat Around is deceptively quiet for about a minute then we’re enmeshed in a whirl of guitars and screeching vocals. In some ways it’s reminiscent of mid to late 80s Sonic Youth and that’s no bad thing at all. In fact it is quite enervating.
The LP continues in the same frenetic, stop-start vein throughout; whether I quote Idle Chatter, Hospital Drama or I Think the Record Stopped, the template is the same, maybe with some extra demented synths or a switch of vocal duties between boy and girl. It’s really the sound of uncontrollable, questioning, unstructured energy, the sort you lose once you hit 35 years of age…
There is a restless intelligence at work here, and I don’t think it’s the sort of wilful and smug perversity that is often distressingly present in this sort of record. No, Help She Can’t Swim as a band are certainly a cut above. Midnight Garden, with its suggestive lyrics, ethereal guitar work and dreamy vocals mid songs is possibly their best song, though All the Stars runs it close with its ridiculous and funny lyrics…
Enjoyable and one to stick on when you’re feeling perky…
Words: Richard Foster