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Sunshine Republic - Sunshine Republic (white label) |
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By happy chance, in the same week that I'm going through the trauma of falling
out of love with Sigur Rós, I get sent this promo, and it seriously
helps kick-start the getting-over-it process by reminding me, most timely,
that there's always going to be another band with the same initials out there
waiting for its moment, a band as clearly raw and hungry as some (*ahem*)
might have become over-produced and bloated.
Two long un-named tracks (12 minutes apiece) following a familiar formula
- the SR-Mogwai-out-of-GY!BE-out-of-Pink-Floyd slow assembly of a wall of
noise from a repeated lyrical riff, here incorporating a refreshingly new
ingredient (to me, at least) in the form of a full-on larynx-wrecking, psychotic,
death-metal screamathon welded onto the climax with all the structural panache
of a gorilla in boxing-gloves stapling the singers feet to the floor. Track
2 moves into sweet-menacing thunder-drone territory - carefully careless slashes
of feedback and distortion masking an almost bashful lyricism that hangs on
in there in the background harmonics like a wallflower, backed overall by
some inspired, free-jazz-like drumming that reminds me a bit of John Stanier
of Battles - culminating, again, in a nakedly abandoned screaming chorus (shorter
this time) that seriously threatens the purlieu of such pussies as Extreme
Noise Terror and Regurgitate.
On this albeit slight evidence, Sunshine Republic's day must surely be just
around the corner. I know nothing about them than that they sound like a two-guitar
and drummer outfit, that they can fill an abandoned warehouse with sound,
no problem, (although getting a decent audio recording there, clearly, was)
and that they might come from Ipswich (evidence: the postmark on the envelope),
where, my most dogged popup enemy keeps announcing, 18-yr-old Katie is eagerly
awaiting my online dating enquiry. Perhaps they're friends. Perhaps that's
why they're screaming.
Catch them here
(once they've managed to work out how to use the internets).
September 2005
