Big Stir 2024
Clocks Are Out Of Time
Back from decades-long limbo to take jingle-jangle rock to the verge of scandal, British noiseniks reassert their defiant stance.
Emerging from the Thatcherism gloom in the mid-’80s, these guys were latecomers on the English post-punk scene everyone seemed to assign them to, yet the band didn’t bother aligning with stylistic labels their pop agenda challenged anyway, as the three albums the quintet issued during their original lifespan demonstrated with a lot of gusto. Still, that run felt too short to satisfy the collective who split between two oceanic shores more than thirty years ago, so they finally went transatlantic to produce “Clocks Are Out Of Time” and close the gap. Reforging old friendship resulted in a new experience applied to magic of yore, and the group’s patented tunefulness fit their contemporary sonics just fine.
Maybe the romantic, and conceptual, promise of “I’ll Give You More” – the album’s finale that, reaching for a five-minute mark, is the longest song on offer – appears to be overtly soft in its big-sky scope and psychedelic vibe, as Steve Brockway’s bass figures underpin the passages of Peter Maxted’s ivories and drums while Ian Wright’s vocals provide light and shadow. But the riff-driven, lysergic grooves of “Heaven Shook Me” and “Heaven” – the record’s second and second-to-last pieces – are dance-inducing and down-to-earth. If there’s a sinister edge to solemn, effects-laden and piano-rippled opener “Hark” where SD Ineson’s guitars and Lawrence Giltnane’s percussion reign supreme, and if electric “Corrupted” and acoustic “Terrible Crime” bare the band’s punk roots, the resonantly creepy “Hidey Hole” throws sarcasm into the mix.
Yet whereas “Angeline Soul” and “Chandelier” add retro twang and robust refrains to the overall soundscape, “Poltergeist” locates its spooky perspective in a cinematic swirl of instruments and female voices projected onto the piece’s backdrop, and the polyrhythmic “Read My Mind” feels effervescently carnivalesque, especially when faux brass licks come to the fore. However, the bluesy, high-on-harmonica “Shark Attack” evokes the ensemble’s halcyon days in Blighty, despite the “never going back” line showing they haven’t lost that vigor of yore and making one doubt whether those glories are all in the past. So yes, guys, give us more to see there’s a future for you.
*****
