Demos

Common Deflection Problems - Naked

Owain Paciuszko 05/12/2009

Rating: 4/5

Police sirens wail in the distance, interrupted suddenly by a cheeky barrage of guitar and bass riffage as well as clattering drums, it sets a nice scene, like a contemporary Artful Dodger (Dickens not dance music) surveying his city. The track Hurricane Dolly continues in similar fashion and is a short, smirky intro before the first track 'proper' (I Have To) pipes up somehow successfully combining the sound of The Cramps with shouty asides and brash riffage. It's pleasingly different. Most strikingly both these personalities are coming out of the same singer/guitarist, Italian Antonio Iannola, accompanied by his bandmate since 2004 - Gianpiero Cacae - on drums and Mario Novello on bass.

Tottenham Court Road has a light, 80s alternative summery sound and some lucid chord changes in the bridges. Antonio's vocals become equally dreamlike, sounding like an upbeat Brian Jonestown Massacre track with little glimmers of Chris Cornell creeping in here and there. It's another gear change that the band handle spectacularly well, keeping the listener eager to hear where they take things next.

Somewhat dissapointingly Overload isn't as impressive, in such a surprising way, as the other tracks, it is a pretty fun and straight-forward indie-pop song and is quickly dwarfed by the bat-shit crazy, Math rock fun of Reharse My Soul which features stop-start instrumentation, screams and howls, quirky percussive asides, freeform scatting, occasional Italian lyrics and a glorious big fat wall of rock finale. (Though I can't find the word 'reharse' in any dictionaries...)

This is a mightily impressive EP from a band who have been together for quite a while, and should make, if not a splash, some ripples in 2010.