I had this in my inbox and sort of slept on it until I saw something in the NME that got me curious. How could I have been so stupid as to wait? Dub Thompson's 9 Songs rocks like a mad beast being whipped on the way to the slaughterhouse!
Part Stooges, part MGMT, part Rites of Spring, part Birthday Party, Dub Thompson are doing everything right here. Clanking and riotous, the 8 -- 'natch -- songs on 9 Songs are the stuff of exhilarating nightmares. The record is out now via Dead Oceans and the band is on tour too.
From the Krautrock storm of opener "Hayward!" to the claustrophobic dub of "No Time" and onward to the funky Fall-isms of "Dograces", Matt Pulos and Evan Laffer -- the 2 cats that make up Dub Thompson -- create one monstrous racket. Styles are pillaged and genres hopped as these two lads cram things together, turn up the amps, and race onward.
"Mono" is early D.C. hardcore colliding with Pere Ubu, while "Ash Wednesday" slinks along like some unnatural collaboration between Tones on Tail and Nick Cave's Bad Seeds. That cut is a sinister-but-sweet strut that signals another direction these cats could go in. And on album closer "Pterodactyls" they go in yet another direction. Part-Loop and part-Nuggets-era garage rock, the cut clanks and bangs yet it still soars -- like a car tooling down the highway as parts of the engine drop off along the way, pavement sparking, the two mad-men in the front seat still peering down the road.
This album is the best kind of trainwreck: loud, boisterous, ill-tempered, rough, punk-y, and invigorating. Well done Dub Thompson.
9 Songs by Dub Thompson is out now on Dead Oceans.
Follow the band on their Facebook page.