"Twenty
Twenty Sound"
EMI Records
CD, 497 2012,
12" 180 gm Vinyl LP, 497 2011
inc. special packaging
The first album
from this 3-piece band with Christian Hayes (guitar &
vocals), Laurence O'Keefe (bass & vocals) and Dave Francolini
(drums). Twenty Twenty Sound is a remarkably polished effort, and
shows much promise for the future.
The songs have an experimental 'lets have a bit of fun here'
quality, with lots of distorted squeals from the lead guitar, and
spot effects which really add to the musical image. The two
vocalists take equal share in the songs; one of the vocalists has
a comparatively clear voice, while the other sounds like he's
singing down a low quality telephone line! Far from being a
criticism, this is actually very pleasing on the ear, and
appropriate to the songs.
The songs themselves have an intangible graphic explicitness to
them; like a well-written story. Some of them are almost
Lovecraftian in style, with a definite gothic-horror influence in
the lyrics.
Ninety-Six
Days
Starting up with a shifting wall of distorted guitar static, the
bass-line comes in, then the percussion breaks in then - it all
stops, the volume drops, the bass-line remains. The crackly
vocals mutter into the mike: "He's pale face pale green
shirt brittle as plaster / He don't mix too well 'til he knows
your name / He comes in from the the side door smelling of petrol
/ Says he sleeps much better now the weather's cold".
Suddenly the intensity flies up 10 miles, and the vocals scream
out, the lead guitar gets all hell thrashed out of it...
9/10
I Am The
Sun
A frantic intro drops down to the aforementioned crackly vocals
and a groovy bass-line; not as nice at the start as Ninety-Six
Days, but it gets really great after that. The vocals and bass
seem to be tripping over each other to get to your ear first - a
very odd but ultimately enjoyable effect.
9/10
About
3am
A slow-starter, lamenting and melancholic, which builds up and
drops down in volume regularly. Has a lovely spoken piece near
the end: "It's about 3 in the morning when it starts to
rain. She sits on the bridge her legs arranged awkwardly in front
of her. He lights another Silk Cut and gazes out over the river,
searching for something. But there's nothing there; just the
sound of the rain..."
7/10
Vertigo
Squealing guitar intros 'r' us - but its another type of
distortion! Another loud one, with a depressing message of
falling from grace to the lowly proletarian slum of a cyberpunk
novel.
8/10
Graceadelica
'How you feel the morning after' would be the best way to
describe this song, with lines like "It's all coming back to
me now / It's all coming back, maybe too late", possibly
ringing bells of every person in the land who ever did something
they might regret the next day.
9/10
A
Disaffection
A story of illness and love and death; and the lengths people
will go, the self-sacrifices they will make, for their
loved-ones. A cool tune, with a whispered "Goodbye"
repeated over a brilliant riff near the end.
8.5/10
Lies
Paul lost his identity, his home, his job, his friends ...his
life. "Said where the hell is my home? Yeah, where is my
home?" But everybody had forgotten him; they didn't know he
existed, the world had turned on him.
8/10
What In
The World's Wrong
The album's only duffer, in my opinion. It has a cheesy little
tune, which can sound just that bit too much at times; and on top
of that there's a 'pop-y' little vocal harmony, which sounds
desperately out of place with the rest of the album. Sorry.
6.5/10
The
Sound Of Awake
A slow deep one with much use made of the percussion, and lyrics
which say 'goodbye' in a very long drawn out way. The song it
reminds me most of is Fleetwood Mac's Albatross although there
don't seem to be any direct comparisons.
8.5/10
Lastly, the cover looks like a page from a book, but on closer inspection there are no sentences - all the words run from one line to the next with no punctuation. What in fact these words are is the lyrics to all the songs, continued on the inside cover too!
SCORE:
90%
(With thanks to DMS of CCM
Reviews)