The music of Coffin Prick owes huge debts to Eighties post-punk in England. While this band is from L.A., there's a whole Brit thing going on here which will earn this record lots of comparisons to stuff like Fad Gadget and The Normal. I suppose that's high praise for the claustrophobic pop of Loose Enchantment? Maybe so.
"Shortly Forgotten Pleasure" percolates like stuff from Dali's Car (Peter Murphy and Mick Karn), while the title cut is more languid. On this one the surface of the cut is sleek, the rhythms meaty-but-restrained, while the vocals gently agitated. It's a heady, compelling mix, and deftly done. Elsewhere, "Work" is quite good, a song from under the floorboards as it was, with the vocals fighting hard to keep pace with sinister keyboard figures.
More than lots of things I've heard in the last two years, Coffin Prick manages to draw from some very cool Eighties albums without it sounding forced. The material here is genuinely dark, and the textures uncluttered. A careful listening of side 2 of Low and a lot of Frank Tovey records has done Coffin Prick well. Nicely done.
Loose Enchantment by Coffin Prick is being released by Temporal Drift.
[Photo: Anne Auerbach]