| About bleedin noses | Ever since Elvis strapped on his guitar and banged out the first chords of “That’s Alright” hipsters have been queuing up to follow musical trends, be it rock and roll, psychedelia, glam rock, reggae, punk or techno. We used to have an explosion that rocked the music scene every few years, but it is now quarter of a century since the last genuinely new music form (techno). We have, however, seen some pretty clever fusions in the last few decades, ska-punk, afro-celtic-dub, rap-metal – and so on. Sadly, even these fusions spawn a host of imitators that turn the ingenious into the mundane. And then – along come the Bleedin Noses. Not quite a new style explosion, but certainly different from anything that has gone before, mixing blue-grass, punk, r ‘n b and skiffle to create a sound that is far more than the sum of its parts. The sound is slick and tight, a sound that can only come from musicians with a few miles on the clock and a varied record collection. This debut CD is a collection of songs from guys that have had their fill of failure and near misses and are all too aware that life is too short for regrets. They plough their own furrow, producing music they like rather than conforming to the rules. As they sing in ‘Skin and Bone’, “Let your life be yours, choose to own yourself, break through your own doors, you an no one else”. The album kicks off with ‘Win’, a high octane dose of optimism that heads down the motorway at 90mph with defeat slowly disappearing in the rear view mirror. ‘Done For’ follows closely behind and gets the feet tapping with a primal bluesy riff that is crying out for a TV western to be made just so they can use this as the soundtrack. There are no overt politics here, but you can’t help thinking they are not happy with the way things are. The opening to ‘Nutters’; “A message to all the nutters, all the nutters with the fingers on the buttons, with some stone cold itchy trigger fingers, funny notions on perfection, hope you're not all nutters, that should be on medication, or the ones that burn the bibles”; hints that come the revolution, they might just take their banjos to the trenches with them. ‘Good for the bad’, reinforces this with “Aint gonna do what you say we should, we will make our own way, we wont move till we are understood, we will stand up and do it all again”. ‘Shant’, is a rare moment of soul searching and reflection on personal failings, providing a soundtrack ripe for kicking your feet about on the dance floor in reckless abandon to. In short, we have eleven tunes (with a sneaky secret twelfth at the end) from a bunch that have graduated from the school of life, realise there is no point worrying and just wanna make people dance to their own tune. |
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