Post-punk Revival Done Right
Post-punk revival is a fickle bitch of a genre. When done with subtlety and grit by groups like The Soft Moon, Black Marble and Interpol, it’s glorious and understated and powerful. When done with reckless abandon by groups like Editors and Bloc Party and, well, also Interpol, it’s an unpleasant and awkward experience for both the band and the listener. It’s a finer line than almost any other style, a line down which all-female quartet Savages dare to briskly power walk at roughly 130 beats per minute.
The girls are back in town with their second LP, Adore Life, and as far as the post-punk rulebook goes they’ve done everything right. The mainstays are all in place: deft, lightning-quick hi-hat work and melodic agile bass lines are mixed out front and compose the album’s bulk. Vocalist Jehnny Beth’s off-key girl shouting is littered with atonal slides in tracks like “Sad Person.” The spidery, swirling guitars are particularly catchy and threadbare on “Evil,” and the end result sounds like Siouxsie and The Banshees on steroids with aggressively crunchy low end. Thankfully, Savages show some restraint with their exclusion of the garish keyboard tones that mar many otherwise enjoyable post-punk songs.
Nevertheless, Adore Life sports the distinctly slick studio fidelity that can only come from the metropolitan union of a London group and a Parisian crooner. The title track starts with a windy Peter Hook bass line and a hell of lot of ambience for a lead single, but it feels like some of the grime and dissonance and rough production that makes post-punk so foreboding yet infectious has been filtered out through the Pro Tools treatment. “It’s about showing weakness to be strong” says a press release of the album’s lyrics, which are almost entirely about the vague concept of love, but that’s something anyone paying the slightest bit of attention could pick out.
And their songs are strong. When you first hear the tone of Savages instruments’ you’d think to lump them in with other rough types like Iceage or Protomartyr, but there’s actually far less hardcore mixed in with the moody post-punk – with the exception of “T.I.W.Y.G.” an abbreviation of “This is what you get when you mess with love” – relative to tracks like “Husbands” from Silence Yourself, which wasn’t too far a leap from Patti Smith. The song’s screaming, frantic Greg Ginn-style lead and buzzing bass lays over full, pretty minor chords that never really venture into the realm of that pure, sweet discordance that makes Joy Division records so divine yet at the same time partially unmistakable.
There are certainly high points. “I Need Something New” has tribal drums and arrhythmic Beefheart-style ranting. “Mechanics” is eerie as fuck, and Beth’s accent certainly adds to the oppressive atmosphere before it all dissolves into the industrial drone. But for the most part Adore Life packs less bite than Savages’ style requires to stay intriguing for an entire LP’s worth of songs, and feels like a run-of-the-mill contemporary rock album in more spots than it should. But, hey, Silence Yourself was pretty great so we’ll chalk it up to the sophomore slump cliché.
Leave a Comment