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Review:
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The Slip are a three piece, all-girl, post-punk
band from Gainesville, Florida. That makes them loosely affiliated
with one of those massive, football-obsessed schools down there,
which, when you think about it, implies lots of youngsters,
which implies a music scene. Makes sense.
This is their first, very DIY release. It is a CD-R with a
black and white printed sticker that comes in a hand-folded
and glued sleeve, also black and white. (Recommendation: ask
the 'rents for a color printer for X-Mas, provided you've kept
your grades up!)
The music itself is also kind of DIY, well, at least the production
is. Or perhaps i should rather say "lack of production". In
all honesty in sounds like these three ladies set up a bunch
of mics in their practice space and hammered through some of
their tunes.
The tunes themselves are really good: these three ladies (Andrea,
Mary, and Sarah -- none could afford last names that's how punk
rawk they are!) have a good deal of talent. It's an EP, so let's
examine the songs it contains.
The EP starts with a wail of guitar, and thudding bass riffs,
and thunderous drums. Waste is good old fashioned punk
rock for a minute or so, then suddenly it's gets more melodic.
A voice comes in (Andrea sings), echoed, although i am not sure
if that is an effect or merely that they recorded in an echoey
room. Either way, this is a good, dark and brooding post-punk-ish
tune.
Plastic Dream starts off with a nice guitar melody (also
courtesy of Andrea). Then keys get added in, and drumming that
is nice and funky. (Sarah is the drummer, but no one on the
sleeve is credited with keys. So i'll assume that Mary played
those.) The melody moves along happily and the drumming and
keyboard/guitar interplay really work. This is a fine song,
and i really wish that it was recorded better. (And by better,
i mean "professionally".)
The next tune is called Shoegazer, and while it is not
exactly a My Bloody Valentine-esque romp, it is a damned fine
tune. The guitar wavers under masses of treble, and the drums
again really impress me. (Sarah really knows what she is doing.)
Andrea is really belting it out here, showing that she really
knows how to use that voice of hers. In a way, this reminds
me of Crybaby. This song
has the great guitarwork and strong female voice of Crybaby.
Anyway, the song builds to a really good crunchy, fast-paced
chorus. At times, while it is building, it almost reminds me
of the early, proto-goth work of Modern English. I am thinking
Mesh And Lace here, if you are one of the 3 other
people who own that album.... So: this is a fine song with hints
of Crybaby and Modern English. Again, damn their DIY recording
for muddying up the sound.
The next track is Chatterbox, the EPs one throwaway.
This is a catchy enough song, but they get a bit crazy with
the overdrive pedal in the middle, going just a bit further
into distortion land than is really merited.
Finally, we have one uncreditied track: some sort of remix
that, i think, draws bits of all of the other tracks. Apparently,
one of them has an iBook, so they fed their music into it and
came out with a groovey little dance tune reminiscent of The
Faint, or Neu!. Good stuff.
In fact, this whole EP is good. The Slip obviously have some
talent. The only thing holding them back at this time is the
poorly recorded nature of this EP. I think that this EP would
be a good listen for those people who have been lucky enough
to see The Slip. For the rest of us it hints at things, but
doesn't quite deliver what it needs to, so i cannot recommend
it all that much. The songwriting talent is there, but the murky
production will frustrate most listeners.
Still, it captures their raw energy, and shows what a good
live band they undoubtedly are. So when are the three of them
going to drive up here to Atlanta? I bet they rule in concert! |
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