times new viking: gummy stumps: captains rest: glasgow

indeed…

well from one extreme to another i s’pose.  from the patience testing minimalism of stars of the lid on thursday to the blitkreig two minute squalls of times new viking on saturday night way down in the teeny sweaty basement of the captains rest.  which sounds like it should be a euphamism for something.

arrived in time to catch the gummy stumps who despite some false starts, broken drum sticks, unreliable guitar straps, a relentless amount of de-re-tunings (of three strings) and numerous apologies for not being quite on their game tonight were in actuality pretty fucking good.  recognised some faces from park attack and the guy bellowing into the microphone with the cheeky half bottle hidden away seemed familiar too.  sounding like a drunk shellac playing immortal lee county killers covers.  or a glaswegian fall playing to belligerent drunks on the last bus home.  or like if the blockheads were a cunningly disguised lightning bolt.  in other more sensible words they kicked up quite a ranting racket.  gummyspace. 

here’s a video of them playing something live.  it’s either art or the worst shot film ever.  cheers fella.

times new viking were really rather good.  if not ridiculously loud to the point occasionally of ruining the song.  what’s not to like?  they would have fitted in nicely to my snotty noise loving musical adolescence.  when they reigned in the bluster a wee bit they sound like what sebadoh sounded like when they were at their awesomnest best, when barlow was getting all mopey and tuneful and loewenstein was cranking out the distortorock.  no matter how much needle in the red racket volume they fling in and how smothering that big hissing atonal blanket is they can’t disguise the goddam tunes festering away amid the clattering.  oh there’s a stinky skuzzy grimey pop band hidden away somewhere.  sometimes buried under a gutjuddering barrage of distortion but it’s there. 

anyway they played a bunch of songs with the word teen in the title including teenage lust! which is a belter of a tune from some wonderful bastard world where guided by voices and the vaselines are still going, growing younger and writing together. 

it’s actually kind of refreshing to have that ugly modern technological sheen removed from the recording / playing process and have music that sounds raw and urgent and immediate and primitive and right fucking there in your face when you listen to it.  like they taped it in your spare room on broken down second hand eastern bloc gear from the sixties.

some songs:

• drop-out
• my head/r.i.p. allegory

and a video:

and some dates:

• monday 26 may dublin andrew’s lane theatre
• wednesday 28 amsterdam paradiso
• saturday 31 spain primavera sound festival

label / vikingspace / purchase