In a letter written to Whisperin’ and Hollerin’ NEORON NO explained how their EP covers “many styles from electro skewed pop to banjo flailing music hall and deals with issues such as the moon landing hoax accuations, the pros and cons of the telethon, TV and cold water, the reformation of Pink Floyd, time imploding, time exploding, insects, love, death, the future and lots of other things that we feel can all be symbolically represented by an x-ray of a robotic dog”. Well, I certainly wanted to give it a listen.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, it’s a bit gimmicky. The first half of the EP consists of two tracks that could belong amongst the electronic paranoia of Bloc Party’s second album. Being from Manchester however, it’s all done with a typical bit of northern gallows humour. While Bloc Party’s cut and paste drum beats were an unrelentingly claustrophobic representation of the modern world, Neuron No’s samples are tacky. It sound like the world has been taken over by a Scarborough amusements arcade. Lyrics such as “I wish I could play out after tea” may reveal a need to get back to the innocence of childhood, away from the “beating chests… that triggered warfare”. Unfortunately these two songs seem so scared of being dull that we are overloaded with information. At its half way point SPIDER’S LAST MOMENT fades into a communal sing-along with added bird sound effects, and just as a fantastically delicate electric guitar comes in, it’s battered into submission by more fairground electronics. It’s complicated for the sake of being complicated.
On NEIL BREAK YOUR SILENCE we refreshingly get the sound of a real band. This dismissal of the moon landing being a hoax (“such claims are unfounded and factually flawed”) is given a wonderfully sci-fi treatment. It sounds like early Pink Floyd at their most disjointed, unhinged and woozy. It feels as delightfully rickety as the Apollo 11 space craft and is by far the standout of the EP. However despite some clever internal rhymes, the melody often feels like it’s following the lyrics too much to have an identity of its own. Just try working out a possible melody for “at one point the flag ripples in a freak breeze brought on set cos that window, tell that runner she’s toast!”. Unless you’re Alex Turner, it probably won’t be brilliant. That said, it is quite funny.
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We get the sound of a real band again on the final track SAVING THE WORLD, a scathingly sarcastic take on the events of Live 8 which is unfortunately quite close to the truth (“I just want to watch The Who”). While lyrics are practically venomous on paper (“as the pledges mount up a tearful Bono frees white doves”) the music takes the form of a banjo knees up. It’s the sound of Chas and Dave having a horrific amphetamine fuelled nervous breakdown. It’s nothing any sane person would want to listen to twice.
Listen to Neuron No at Bandcamp
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