Though he's previously seemed relatively content to lurk on the fringes and indulge in merely the odd dash into the limelght, the past twelve months have seen an almost unprecedented burst of creative activity where local West Yorkshire legend-in-waiting John Parkes is concerned.
First there was the excellent 'Shine' compilation, culling together the best of The Sinister Cleaners' work from the late 1980s and as I type he's just about to unveil the arrival of the follow-up to his excellent 2006 solo album 'Faithlessness' (sic). Elbowing its' way in between these releases, though, is yet another long-player, the gleefully noisy bastard that is Parkes' current band WHOLE SKY MONITOR'S second album 'Bland Bland Bland'. Phew! Is our hero after the West Yorkshire guild award for Bob Pollard-style work rate or summat?
Whatever, a proliferation of Parkes can only be a good thing, especially as the raw, thrusting delights contained with the seethingly good 'Bland Bland Bland' resoundingly knock the uneven contents of WSM's debut album and attendant 'We Grow Up' EP into a cocked hat.
The critically-acclaimed recent single 'Harehills Chapeltown' gives you some idea of what to expect. Stuffed to the gills with cranked, steroid-ed up guitars, lunkhead disco drums and set to a typically skewhiff narrative about life and strife in Leeds 8 ("an all-white steel band!") it's merely one of a whole arsenal of tunes these rearguard renegades have been polishing up to let off in recent times and the great news is that much of what surrounds it also goes off in your hand like an unholy alliance of Sonic Youth, McLusky and the long lost Big Flame.
Which is, unquestionably, a very good thing indeed, as the best of the fallout comes thick and fast. Opener 'Cinenema' is an intense squall of a thing; 'Three Cheers For The Weirdo' not only boasts one of the best titles ever, but also marries a narrative about a slanging match on the bus to a corker of a tune and the venal, looming 'Sick Sick Sick' ( all together now: "five, six, seven - all politicians go to heaven!") sticks the knife brutally into the dear old NHS with style to spare.
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Three bouts of sonic fisticuffs especially stand out, though. Firstly, there's the cyclical, perpetual motion riffing and state of the rotten nation address of the title track. This one sets a precariously high standard, though it's arguably topped by the startling, restraining order tale of 'Just Let Me Talk To Her' ("I told her once, I told her twice, she left me with no choice!") and definitely trumped by the harrowingly scabrous social commentary of 'Way Over Fourteen', where the spectre of human trafficking ("A row over money with a Muslim man/ a bullet from the window of a passing van") hangs uncomfortably low over Leeds 9 and the band conjure up a suitably controlled shitstorm of a backdrop to ram the point home. It may well be their finest moment to date, come to that.
'Bland Bland Bland', then, is the sound of yet more impressively purposeful indie guerrilla action emanating from the West Yorkshire hinterland. Significantly, it's also wall-to-wall with excitable, souped-up excellence and delights in taking a cleaver to its' own title. It's fair to say controlled psychosis has rarely sounded so resonant.
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