Album Review: Psychopunch - Smakk Valley

Psychopunch’s Smakk Valley may sound venemous and slightly seedy, but it’s actually all rolling punk with pop sensibilities. A set of driven tracks, coated in colour and bolstered with a strong sense of fun. An amalgamation of Green Day, The Wildhearts, The Ramones and Bowling For Soup, it comes as no surprise to me that these Swedish stalwarts have remained below my radar despite the nine other albums they’ve churned out between 1999 and 2010. Sounding a little old hat now, much of what they do sticks firmly to the power-pop basics of get in fast, raise the roof, and get out.

With 14 tracks of fast rhythms, verse-chorus-verse structure, predictably simple lyrics and straight-up 4/4 beats, what you see is what you get. Vocally, frontman / guitarist JM certainly gets plenty of backing, both in the polished production and from his band-mates who lather on a swathe of “oohs” and “aahs”. This has always been the kind of music best heard live, so it feels slightly unfair judging them from the depths of my cold, mid-Winter abode. I’ll try and be gentle.

They all kick off the show by getting fast and wild for “Back Of My Car”. It’s a track that toys with going full-Nirvana on us with a sequence of “Territorial Pissings”-chords for the verse, only to then cut the charade and shift into full Bowling For Soup mode. There’s a slide down into half-reggae for “So Jaded” that will make you smile, but from here they slip straight into auto-pilot with a sequence of songs that battle each other for worst lyrics and most obvious structure. The medium-pacer “Last Night” wins the former category with the line “Last night it really wasn’t me / I had too much to drink / Baby, can’t you see / It was the Hennessy” and “Sitting By The Railroad” wins the latter with its ghastly backing vocals and dire four-chord rotation.

Their creative peak hits somewhere in the middle. JM’s thick, throaty growl cuts up superbly for the heads-down rocker “Dead By Dawn” giving it a dangerous, Ramones-esque edge. All worn leather and cigarettes, howling guitars and pounding skins, this one breathes life back into the whole shebang. “Smack Valley Train” gets its New York Dolls-snarl on in the verses before flicking up into a bold major chord for another over-eager, slickly fluorescent chorus. The bridge interestingly gets a dose of Maiden-esque guitar licks to add to the pile whilst “Emilie” ducks back into brainless hammering and off we go again for another round of pogoing. Closer “You’re Totally Mistaken” ups the ante again and stands out as a bit of a moody crusher, soaking itself in feedback, with deep pinged bass and a ripped, singalong chorus – Psychopunch are a band that definitely benefits from throwing in minor chords. Each time they up their dark quotient, they add guile and emotion to what, effectively, is an album that runs straight and true.

Now, this constructive criticism is all well and good at the end of the day but what has impressed me most about the band is their philosophy. It dominates everything here and this is the reason you need to take notice of because there are so many fakers out there. JM sums it up with the words: “We don’t think our attitude has changed over the years in terms of wanting to be a great live band that makes people happy and gives them a chance to forget about their problems.” How can you criticise a band with that outlook on making music? It’s like happy-slapping a puppy.

End of the day, Smakk Valley isn’t an album without fault but that doesn’t mean it’s not a riot – it could be gold dust for fans of any of the aforementioned bands. Perhaps it wasn’t my cup of Joe this week, but the next time I feel like letting loose and partying hearty, I’ll be checking my local listings for a band called Psychopunch because I know I’ll have a good time at their show.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2013/01/psychopunch-smakk-valley-spv-steamhammer/

Album Review: Lower Than Atlantis – Changing Tune

From albums that feature symbols of a violent and poor upbringing (a smashing television and hands holding pocketfuls of shrapnel), Lower Than Atlantis have chosen to represent their move to a major label (Island Records) with a foetal elephant floating in space surrounded by a dizzying array of eyes. “The new album is our version of a 70s acid trip,” says vocalist Mike Duce, “and the artwork is what we feel best represents that idea.” Looking at it, I have never been more nervous to spin the disc inside.

With track-titles like “Cool Kids”, “PMA” (presumably Positive Mental Attitude) and “Showtime”, I needn’t have worried. In a nutshell, Changing Tune represents a collision of candy-coated pop sensibilities with their more familiar, lyrically-introspective, punk rock ethos. The band’s steady manoeuvering to a position of strength based around a lightning-quick BPM and anaemic lyrics backed by cloying aaaah’ed choruses is even more noticeable here than it was for sophomore album World Record. Suddenly, LTA are more You Me At Six than they are Funeral For A Friend. Viewed in one light it marks a growing up of sorts for Watford’s finest; a gentle mellowing of delivery from their raw, feisty beginnings. Of course, viewed in another it might be seen as a deliberate move to a more mainstream sound in an attempt to secure more sales, particularly seeing as it comes with a generous laquer of glossy production applied.

Essentially, “Love Someone Else” and “Go On Strike” are vapid, over-simplistic, day-glo pop-punk songs with a single, undeniably strong hook. If these are intended to be the equivalents of addictive, thought-provoking tracks like Far Q‘s “Taping Songs Off The Radio” or World Record‘s “Beech Like A Tree” or “(Motor) Way Of Life” then it suggests a dearth of quality material – honestly, writing three albums in three years was pushing it anyway.

It’s the slightly darker, edgier tracks that deserve more of your attention – the crafty, minor-chord rebukes of “Wars With Words”, the abusively fuzzed-up guitar riff of “Normally Strange”, the jagged rock of the compulsive “PMA”, and the thinking man’s ballad “Scared Of The Dark”. Interestingly, with those tracks out of the way, the album ends by twisting up the band’s pop-punk dial again and again they begin to drift from their defining identity. Depending on whether you dig the style you’ll either come out of “Cool Kids” and “I Know A Song That Will Get On Your Nerves” covered in sweat or, like me, bashing your head against the wall.

One final task awaits. Having consumed Changing Tune it is now time to go back and challenge Duce’s view of it. The only parts of the album where I can recognise anything that can be connected to “a 70s acid trip” are perhaps the two-chord “Prologue”, which comes replete with a dislocated echo chamber vocal, the gnarly verses of “Normally Strange”, and the odd, notably brief, inclusions of reverberating feedback, twittering birds and whalesong. Perhaps Duce is letting us in on some massive in-joke (it wouldn’t be the first time). I mean, even these moments would be better described as peculiar anomalies rather than hint at anything particularly mind-mangling. If Lower Than Atlantis conjured the title Changing Tune to highlight they had moved towards a more predictable end-product then they can consider it a mission accomplished.

Also online (with samples) @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/lower-than-atlantis-changing-tune