Reykjavík Grapevine - 12.08.2011, Side 31

31
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 12 — 2011
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Music | Live Review
The Vintage Caravan
Daníel Ágúst
The Vintage Caravan
thevintage
The Drift
danielagust
Dillon bar has found its new
princes
Compelling to generation after
generation
Things are actually starting to look
rather healthy in the Icelandic hard-
core scene right now. With the Grange
Hill grindcore of Logn and the slightly
bleak worldview of World Narcosis
coming at you like a procession of
gobby meerkat, we now have the
goodtime counterpoint of Manslaugh-
ter’s debut album.
Made up of the scrag ends of
Muck, Plastic Gods and Catarpil-
larmenn, they’ve tightened and
refocused their sound a bit since their
split 7” with Logn. Forcing their doom
metal and crossover thrash together
means a sound baby that sounds half
like Municipal Waste/Asshole Parade
and half like tweaking Celestine (not a
bad thing really).
And with song titles that veer from
nihilistic (‘Facial Birth’, ‘Reject Confor-
mity’) with the puerile (‘MILF’, ‘Beer
(It’s What’s For Dinner)), this is one of
the more cathartically dumb releases
I’ve heard this year. Yes there’s gallons
of piss and venom, but they’d much
rather have a party at the end of the
day.
This is the album to listen to when
you want to, in the words of Henry
Rollins, ‘Fuck on the floor and break
shit! ’
- BOB CLUNESS
Start this album on track 7—‘Don't Let
Your Dreams Go’—which will tell you
everything you need to know about
the style, approach, personality and
proper-rock-song attitude of the now-
veterans. It's an early-70s long-hair
Zeppish rocker with a satisfying hint
of desperation about it and the lyrics
speak for themselves. And with a little
bit more guitar hysterics and vocals it
could be the White Stripes quite easily.
Not that they want to be; the whole
point is that this is classic rock played
timelessly by a bunch of longhairs
who've made a few bad decisions
in their career but very few, on this
evidence, in songcraft. Check out
Nothing Can Go Wrong for a perfect
example. It's a niftily-controlled album
of prog-tinted hard rock in a just-pre
NWOBHM sense—something like
Samson circa 1981. This is an LP which
isway, way better than the band name.
- JOE SHOOMAN
Manslaughter
Deep Jimi and the Zep Creams
FUCK LIFE CHOOSE DEATH
thevintage
Better When We're Dead
deepjimi
GRRRRRAAAAAAGH!!!! Hear
that tribal roar!
It ain't pastiche when you believe
in it
People will often give a bunch of kids
that play wholly derivative genre music
a free ride if they play said genre
music well. And this applies wholly to
The Vintage Caravan.
Now the thing is, their self titled
album sounds really good. The pro-
duction gives their music an edge and
attack that you really don’t get with
other bands, say Deep Jimi and the
Zep Creams. The guitars squall, the
drums clatter and the bass punches.
But the actual music they play, which
is heavy blues rock, has already been
played to death a million times before,
in a million different iterations over
many, many decades. But as I said,
they play this schlock really well so
most people won’t care. Perfect for
those dads who complain that you
don’t hear any ‘real music’ nowadays.
- BOB CLUNESS
Blues doesn't get the appreciation it
deserves. But if Daníel Águst has got
anything to do with it, that's gonna
change, cowboy. And though the form
itself is based round familiar chords
and licks, in the hands of someone
with something to say and the skills
with which to say it that self-same an-
chor allows a great amount of contem-
porary context. Check the title track—
country blues with an irresistibly
insistent synth line blubbing around a
live-and-lifeforce age-old-tale. Else-
where, Falling In Lust has more than
a hint of Nick Cave about matters,
and the epic Snowlake is The Who as
produced by the mighty Alabama 3.
Give us a collaboration with em please
Mr. Á? An idea of the continued mo-
tivation to create comes across very
strongly in Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, which
despite some worryingly-Mobyish
moments is a cracking celebration of
music and possibilities. Okay, mean-
while there is an end-of-night hazy
squashy out-of-mind piece with all the
claustrophobia of self-searching and
the release of the same through love.
Such subjects are of course timeless;
it's how they're delivered that's what
makes them continue to be compelling
to generation after generation.
- JOE SHOOMAN