By Monk
Appearances can definitely be deceptive, and I have to admit that when I first clocked the name Dirty Velvet my first thought was that they would be one of the latest fad-following NWoCR wannabes: all flares and mean stares, with big blues rock riffs and songs about ex-girlfriends and sour whiskey… Well, with a name like Dirty Velvet, you could be forgiven for conjuring up such an image… but nothing could be further from the truth, as this Swiss quartet plough a much darker and distracting furrow…
Things don’t get off to a good start, with the highly generic ‘Moon’, filled with fuzzy guitars and out of phase vocals, it’s somnambulist pace and laconic approach failing to provide an immediate impact. Fortunately, once again, this proves to be something of a misleading preface to the main body of work, as ‘Bastards’ curve balls us with its broiling, bubbling riff and deceptively effervescent vocal.
Talking of curve balls: just where the absolute fuck did ‘You N’ Me’ come from? Just as we’re getting into some sort of doom/stoner groove via, the admittedly quite commercial sounding, ‘Another Reality’, comes this wacky slice of shoegazey indie-pop nonsense, made all the more so because two seconds later a crunchy riff tears back in and introduces us to the ‘Queen Of Decadence’…
And that’s the problem with this album: it tries to blend too many styles, not in an homogeneous way, but one which sees all the sonic flavours clash and collide with one another in a way which is both disharmonious and unappetizing. ‘No No No’, for example, sounds like a reject from a Fleetwood Mac album.
Sorry guys, but your ‘Forbidden Fruit’ isn’t particularly appetizing…
- ‘Far Beyond The Moon‘ is released on Friday 14 April.
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