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Review: 'Special Moves'
'Little Help'   

-  Label: 'Jigsaw Records/Solidarity Club Records'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '20.8.20.'

Our Rating:
Special Moves are an open source rock band from Olympia Washington fronted by Joshua Hoey and Little Help is the band's debut mini album that manages to fit 10 songs into it's 20 minute running time.

This mini album opens with the clattering joyous romp of Our Summer that sounds like they are drinking and having a good time in the sun and are a little incoherent.

Thank U Pile Of CDR's is a title and song that makes me feel really old as my equivalent would be the pile of cassettes of recordings of the Peel show or Other radio shows, this is nostalgia for the halcyon days of the CD-r so late 1990's to 2010 or so, does it make me want to pull out some classic CD-r's, well maybe and if it does they would probably be bootlegs of gigs from the 80's or bonkers Swedish prog albums from the 60's and 70's.

Look At The Ground is of course a shoegaze mantra for the lonely wallflowers Special Moves seem to be aiming themselves at this is a geeky loner anthem.

I Think About You And It Makes Me Smile And Not Want To Die which is a bit of a mouthful of a title for a song that puts a lot of pressure on the object of their desire as this clatters the plea for love into your ears.

Based On A True Story opens like a Crystallized Movements epic drug miasma breakdown tune and then just hits repeat and slowly metastasizes into a wallowing mire of possibilities it may only be 2 minutes 20 or so long but feels like a 10 minute epic.

They then do a cover of the Boyracer classic I've Got it And It's Not Worth having and they do it in a good shoegazing meets anorak style.

Something I Forgot To Du is a clattering indie brawler that is almost unfocused enough to sound like Archers Of Loaf did the only time I saw them live in Madison Wisconsin back in the day.

U Never Went Away is full of longing for a time when you still loved them and didn't mind being asked what your favourite Pavement albums are, this is low fi and is on the borders of being a slacker anthem.

Hate To Say I Like This Song is ironic enough to live up to the title as the pulsing backing vocals and insistent riff come up against Joshua Hoey's vocals that sound like he's going all Lou Barlow on us.

The mini album closes with One Big Last Score that seems to nick several classic song parts from goth anthems of the early to mid-80's and reworks them into a shambling monolith of sustained notes and moody drumming for an instrumental that brings the joy back to making imperfect records.

Find out more at https://www.facebook.com/specialmovesband/
  author: simonovitch

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