THE problem with this column only running every two weeks is that it inevitably ends up falling behind in the constant scramble to cover all the latest and greatest releases from our finest up-and-coming bands.
A case in point is socio-politically aware Derry alt-rock quartet The Wood Burning Savages, who put out their second album Hand To Mouth way back at the start of February.
Bandleader Paul Connolly even very kindly sent me the record on limited edition marble-effect eco mix vinyl, which has been receiving regular spins on the turntable at Noise Annoys Towers over the past few weeks.
Anyway let’s get you caught up – honestly, it’s been worth the wait…
The Wood Burning Savages – Hand To Mouth (album, Flak Jacket Records)
LIKE their fine 2018 debut, Stability, Hand To Mouth was birthed at Belfast’s Start Together Studios by producer Rocky O’Reilly, who clearly knows exactly how to ensure the Savages live up to the visceral promise of their moniker while also helping them to explore more subtle and nuanced musical terrain.
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Having weathered a pandemic and, in the case of Mr Connolly, life-threatening illness in the years since their first record, Hand To Mouth finally arrives just when we need it most.
To these ears, it makes an appealingly and appropriately vitriolic soundtrack to the absolute madness that’s currently unfolding on the world stage right now.
Opener Grind Your Teeth finds TWBS pummelling their way out of your speakers with the open wound rawness of wits-end fury and frustration, recalling the Manics at their most potent.
Title tune Hand To Mouth keeps up the assault, clanging and churning with a sense of deep-seated unease, as Connolly snarls up a storm about teflon-coated charlatans subjecting “generation backburner” to death by a thousand cuts.
Hand to Mouth makes an appealingly and appropriately vitriolic soundtrack to the absolute madness that’s currently unfolding on the world stage right now
“Spend my whole life ducking punches / left, right, centre, it’s all the same” he sings on the stomping, earwormy chorus of the Savages’ current single, Record of Achievement, a great proggy number on which the band explore deceptively groovy, synth-bolstered indie-dance territory (with a surprising hint of Queen to boot) on the verse sections, conjuring a ‘good time’ vibe which belies this shape-shifting song’s true sentiment of sick-to-the-stomach dissatisfaction.
Starting off hushed and melancholic before gradually building up a bracing head of steam, 1000 Mumbling Virgins addresses the toxic impact of US gun culture on a generation of angry incels with posters of “Charlton Heston with a Smith & Wesson” on their bedroom walls, Connolly’s vocal melody deliberately evoking the Manics’ If You Tolerate This even as he and fellow guitarist Michael Woods throw a playful smidgen of smooth Dire Straits-esque licks into the mix before swerving back into anthemic indie rock mode.
Mid-album highlight Climb The Ladder is another superb fusion of indie rock/dance, with the band locking into a heavy Queens of The Stone Age style motorik groove before catchy choruses erupt in a surge of spiralling guitar abuse.
“Rung by rung, watch me climb the ladder” intones Connolly, sounding very much like a man who’s resigned himself to climbing out of the frying pan and into the fire.
The band take aim at Monument Valley is a moody, stop/start indie rocker with another superb singalong chorus and a swathe of guitar fireworks that would bring a tear to Billy Corgan’s eye, while Landlord’s Prayer offers a rousing sharp-tongued anthem for the mould-afflicted multi-occupancy set trapped far beneath the property ladder.
Seemingly inspired by those awful, tone-deaf ads for the British armed forces which target vulnerable 17-year-olds with limited prospects – Learn a trade! See the world! – It Takes a Bomb to Raise A Village (slightly cringy title aside) gallops along pleasingly before Strict Diet takes us back to the mid-90s for a grunge metal banger with a nice dash of Talking Heads in its down-tuned DNA.
Hand to Mouth ends in somewhat downbeat manner with the string-augmented worker drone lament When The Hammer Hits The Chisel – “we’re here to feast on wonder, not keep a wolf from the door” – and elongated, lighters/phones-in-the-air rock ballad Last of The Legacies which aims for epic but sadly outstays its welcome a tad.
Guess I just prefer the Savages when they’re on the attack rather than licking their wounds.
No doubt I’ll be forced to eat those very words when the band have the entire crowd singing every word of its chorus at the upcoming album launch show at The Black Box in Belfast on April 19.
Indeed, there’s still plenty of time to learn the lyrics to a difficult second album that was undoubtedly worth every second of struggle, doubt and pain it took to deliver into the world.
Own it today at thewoodburningsavages.bandcamp.com, then get your tickets for the show at blackboxbelfast.com.
SINGLE OF THE WEEK
Gender Chores – Roy (self-released)
OUR last Noise Annoys stars Gender Chores are back with a ‘surprise’ new release, Roy, which finds the Belfast trio serving up a pleasingly prowling/snarling new tune centred on a titular racist, a bitter auld git who stokes up hate against minorities from his barstool as a distraction from his own myriad failings.
“Don’t you dare swoop in and take a job as a nurse when he’s just been sacked… from the shipyard,” they mock.
“Right now, the world feels like it’s going backwards in so many ways, with bigots and fascists being platformed and marginalised voices silenced,” say Soph, Sam and AJ.
“We want to fight back against that however we can, and combat the narrative of hate and fear that got us into this place.
“With every release from this EP, we want to contribute in some way to the issues that have influenced our songs.
“That’s why 50 per cent of this track’s Bandcamp profits will go to NICRAS, a Belfast based refugee led organisation supporting refugees and asylum seekers.”
Good band, good tune, good cause – what more could you ask for?
Show them some support now by pledging a quid or more via genderchores.bandcamp.com.
Oh, and remember: #NotAllRoys.
Hypnic Jerk – On The Edge (album, Gruberville Records/Black Tragick)
I’D BEEN looking forward to finally hearing this one: ex Waldorf & Cannon man Philip ‘Wally’ Wallace started teasing us with tunes from his solo project Hypnic Jerk last year, which finds the Donegal man continuing the proud W&C tradition of lo-fi/ hi-quality home-recorded tuneage while exploring a more wilfully noisy, fuzzy musical direction as a literal one-man band in the vein of the mighty Bob Log III (only without the jumpsuit and motorbike helmet).
Released last week, On The Edge was recorded entirely at Wally’s home studio, AKA The Muff Shack.
What was he bulding in there? Well, the album starts out by treating liteners to a thrillingly fast ‘n’ fuzzy barrage of top quality garage blues/psych boogie in the form of the previously released singles Spit it Out, Emotional Hijack and Hypnic Jerk’s eponymous theme tune, all of which are smeared liberally with Wally’s tuneful yet distorted vocals.
Spit it Out
Hypnic Jerk
Emotional Hijack
Then, just as your ears are starting to ring, Wally eases off the gas slightly with the stomping beat and stuttering riffs of mid-tempo fuzz-out Let It All Go, Stooges/Stones/Queens of The Stone Age-tribute Alien Nation, the latter of which features some impressive blues harp wailing amid its crunchy thump ‘n’ grind.
Mid-album highlight Rite of Passage leans into the garage blues side of the Jerk sound yet further for a slow ‘n’ slinky strut that’s manna for the sleepy eyed head-nodding and devolves into a mesmerising droney jam-out with yet more blues harp honking and Wally hollering his heart out.
Side two high kicks its way out of your speakers in stoner rock style with head-bangingly heavy riffer Fentanyl, with Brass Neck and the the superbly titled Box Set Death March then shifting gears into funkier territory, though the latter serves up plenty of noisy guitar skronk as a tasty accompaniment to its streetwise strut – and the introduction of some skittery xylophone late in proceedings keeps things from going too ‘gangsta’.
On The Edge rounds off with catchy slide guitar-augmented pop rock nugget State of The World, which sounds pleasingly like a grungy, dirty sneakers-clad second cousin of Bachman Turner Overdrive’s classic Takin’ Care of Business.
“Truth is a revolutionary act” croons Wally, expressing a sentiment that’s right for these troubled times before putting the song, and the album to bed with a final blast of mouth organ action.
But wait – there’s more: unlisted track Freakin’ In, Freakin’ Out offers a bonus slice of funky, muscular fuzzed-out action that’s just as valid as anything that precedes it.
If that all sounds like your kind of party, then invite yourself along immediately at hypnicjerker.bandcamp.com.
We want Hypnic Jerk gigs and we want them now – more news on that as and when I have it.
In the meantime, here’s some other upcoming live dates for your consideration…
GIG RADAR
Incoming live dates for your diary
Who knew that the unlikely mash-up of Madchester-style guitar psychedelia and post-hardcore punk could be a thrilling as London quintet Hi-Vis make it sound?
This is likely to be the most chaotic show Voodoo has witnessed since the stage-diving chaos of Drug Church – mind your noses on that low ceiling, kids.
Milo goes to Belfast (finally): Three legendary and quite different US punk bands playing under the same roof on the same bill make this unmissable for any fan of the genre – but, for me, it’s all about seeing my beloved Descendents making their long-overdue Belfast debut.
Belfast’s finest Problem Patterns team up with London besties Fightmilk and two brand new local bands for an all-ages show.
Inclusive, political-yet-positive DIY punk rock at its finest.
J Spaceman revisits his band’s unfairly overlooked second LP, Pure Phase, in full to celebrate its 30th anniversary.
More > Spiritualized set to stun with first Pure Phase 30th anniversary shows in Ireland
Blissed-out guitar drones and anthemic gospel-informed odes to pharmaceutically-enhanced lifestyle await.
‘Kurt Cobain’s favourite band’ return to Belfast for a show featuring Frances and Eugene performing all your Vaselines favourites as duo, just like they used to do when they first formed in Glasgow nearly 40 years ago (only without the drum machine).
ALSO RELEASED
Gareth Dunlop – Goodbye All Over Again (single, Zenith Cafe)
LAST but not least for this week’s Noise Annoys, we have a new tune from Belfast singer-songwriter Gareth Dunlop – but don’t be expecting to hear one of your favourites from his excellent recent album Welcome To The House of I Don’t Know.
Instead, Goodbye All Over Again is a much older song, a fine heartfelt note-to-self ode about the pain of spending too much time thinking about what you’ve lost which has been given a new lease of life thanks to it featuring in a recent episode of the US TV show Found.
“Goodbye All Over Again is a personal song about loss, grief, and how difficult it can be looking back,” comments Dunlop, who will be hitting the road next month supporting Duke Special on a run of English and Scottish dates.
“I wrote this song almost 7 years ago, and it blows my mind that it found a home in a major network TV show in America.”
Funny how the musical world works these days, eh?
Download/save/playlist Goodbye All Over Again via garethdunlopmusic.com/Goodbyealloveragain
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