jakobinarina

jakobinarina - the first crusade

you see it’s albums like this that are killing my passion.

an imprint that brought such glories as the delicious beta band, brothers in sound, medicine8 (how ahead of the dirty electro curve were they ?) now seem intent on ruining any such good faith the labels esteemed history allows.

of course, it is more than likely it is i that is out of the loop with the labels latest signing, after all, it wouldn’t be the first time !

in the mid-late 80s i lived in leeds and local heroes the wedding present were everywhere, while all my friends loved david gedges‘ songs of broken love and crappy bedsit lifestyle, i hated the whole scene with a passion.

you see, my life had been turned around by the day-glo grooves of washington based go-go funk, and the blossoming def jam records, and from then on, low grade indie shenanigans no longer appealed to my still full of self loathing sorry ass.

i wanted, nay needed, to escape the grey-ness that permeated my day to day crap, and didn’t want anything on my turntable/boombox to reflect the budgetary restrictions that my damp infested student lifestyle allowed, i wanted to feel the heat-n-beat of new york hip hop, feel the exciting throb of acid house, so the overload of the post c86 indie felt like a unnecessary form of musical devolution, and the wedding present represented that world for many a year to most people living in certain leeds postcodes. and to cut to the chase, jakobinarina sound like the wedding present.

ok, in a lot more forthright, well produced 2007 manner, but still the music is all about the same sharp-n-fast scratchy guitar riffs, the same gruff vocal styles singing about being 17 and not giving a fuck, or about boring monday nights in.

etc etc. sometimes like during sleeping in seattle, there are even hints of a hard edged northern accent being dropped into the wordplay, which for a band that come from iceland is quite remarkable.

so as you can probably tell, this sparky upfront album is not doing anything for me other than revive unwanted mental associations, the likes of which are impossible to by-pass.

no doubt, like the wedding present, this band will garner frothy reviews from the fanzine world, and subsequently take their brand of agitated post punk pop to the top of everyone elses playlist.