Graham Reid | | 1 min read
What we forget, because history is reductive, is that for every Beatles there were a dozen bands like the Merseybeats, for every Clash probably 20 like Sham 69 or UK Subs, for every Nirvana . . .
What those other bands do, aside from add breadth (if not depth) to a style or period, is provide immeasurable pleasure, albeit one-off in some cases. Also, without someone like Jewel we might forget how deeply talented and different someone like Joni Mitchell is. We need these points of comparison.
And so to Fight Like Apes, a four-piece out of Dublin whose raucous pop-rock with electronic twiddles owes as much to Avril Lavigne's skate-punk as it does to Siouxsie and the Banshees, as much to likeable Ting Tings pop as to Sonic Youth's noisy thrash. They are pop, punk, alt and rock.
They have humour (song titles include I'm Beginning to Think You Prefer 90210 To Me, Snore Bore Whore and Lumpy Dough) and attitude (you wouldn't want to be the Jake Summers who is the target of the song of the same name) and they bristle with energy and excitement on this their debut studio album (recorded in Seattle with John Goodmanson who knob-twiddled for Death Cab For Cutie, Sleater-Kinney and other worthies).
That said, this has a flash/pan quality and while they will doubtless go on to better things (or disappear) this is enjoyable for its enthusiasm more than any other inherent qualities.
They do write a good pop hook and songs such as Do You Like Karate?, Something Global and Jake Summers -- already released as singles in Ireland -- deserve to be all over alt.radio.
The more I listened to and enjoyed this, the more I thought: every generation deserves its Turning Japanese.
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