As musical endorsements go I think its fair to say that none came higher than John Peel’s. And the highly privileged STEVELESS (AKA Dan Newman of Bristol) had the great honour of being the late Peely’s last great discovery apparently. His new album ‘POPULAR MUSIC IN THEORY’ is a full-on, brutal assault on the senses and exactly the kind of thing that went down well with the former Mr. Ravencroft. Fresh, exciting and chock full of spiky energy this is music for people who find the White Stripes, John Spenser or Yeah Yeah Yeahs too polished and genteel.
For a minute - lets just forget about ‘Teenage Kicks’ – how many more times do you need to hear that (and do you know what folks?? – shock, horror but The Undertones have more than ONE great song)? Peel rightfully mistrusted nostalgia and I have no doubt he would have been quite ambivalent to the Diana-esque tributes and releases appearing in his memory of late. What I’m saying is - instead of buying a compilation of somewhat left of field indie songs you have heard a million times already go out and buy this instead. He will thank you for it should you meet him in musical Valhalla. Mentioning great dead rock gurus – Lester Bangs would also approve of this one I think.
Right, enough about them – lets get to the music. As I said STEVELESS is loud and fast – now, this isn’t always good thing. Noise, or as Lester preferred to call it ‘skronk’ can be joyfully cathartic. However, many bands equate passion with speed and force of attack exclusively, but in my book you can only express anger, excitement, frustration etc. effectively in accelerated 4/4 time for a very short period. Otherwise it becomes boring very quickly and you defeat the purpose of the whole thing if rage becomes a formula.
Luckily tho’ STEVELESS avoids this trap due to his musical inventiveness and unmistakable flair for doing the wrong thing at the right time. I have no doubt that many may find this an unlistenable mess but to mine ears its manna from the gods and fills me with the same feeling as when my ears were first opened to music. High praise eh? The first song BORED is one of the best Rn’R songs I have heard in ages – angular, irrational, and razorsharp with a devastating climax. Boredom is of course one of the great garage-rock subject matters and this song joins The Buzzcocks and others in the upper echelons. Nice keyboards too.
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Other highlights - WAITING brings to mind an amphetamine-wired Suicide and at 54 seconds is a perfect length. An earthquake inducing bass line makes SCREAM a dancefloor sure-shot (in my house anyway) and DIDN”T LIKE IT keeps things rolling along nicely until GLAD, a midrecord high and anti-Nazi rant. Listen to the guitar kick in at around 2:10 – it rams you to the wall like a jackboot in fury.
Indeed one should mention here that Steveless' guitar playing throughout is something to behold. His style - a tornado of twisted electrical madness and piledriving rhythm brings to mind Bob Quine and Arto Lindsay. Who needs scales anyhow? Give me this above Clapton any day
After GLAD there follows 6 songs all clocking in at under 2 minutes that keep the level of quality and intensity very high until the closer TO HELL WITH BOREDOM (back to that again but, how bad) a three minute epic which brings to mind a more ragged Gang of Four, who also had a similar song title to one of their tunes I seem to remember. And if all that isn’t enough we get a hidden bonus track – a genius interpretation of the ancient folk/blues ‘Frankie and Johnny’. This one is as good as Mississippi John Hurt’s version and that’s as good as it gets. Whereas MJH’s one was a deftly picked story-song here we get some mind bogglingly primal ‘UG!-music' at its most visceral. Brilliant stuff.
So I will repeat myself – vaguely dissatisfied with the current crop of disaffected guitar bands? Slightly suspicious that something else wonderful may be out there hiding under a bushel? Well, it is. Get STEVELESS in your life ASAP. I did and I feel ten times better already. If a bit deafer. And if you don’t like it… well, its only around 26 minutes long anyway so it wont eat into your day too much
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