Reykjavík Grapevine - 22.05.2015, Blaðsíða 20

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20 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 6— 2015MUSIC
Boys and girls, we live in
dank, dire times. It’s bad
enough that our lives are dictated
to us by a herd of inbred fools, but in
music terms, it’s becoming intolerable,
and scanning the state of the Icelandic
“rock and roll” landscape today only
brings tears of despair. There’s the car-
toon hard-rock orthodoxy of the Vin-
tage Caravan and the fetid authenticity
fetishism of Blueshammer Kaleo. And
then there’s Bubbi Morthens, a bitter
punk turned scenic storyteller turned
whiny media whore turned Widow
Twanky pantomime dame with his Dim-
ma wank-bot backing band. The real
nadir has been the fact that Monotown,
a band that makes Doves sound like the
end of Western civilisation, won the best
rock album at this year’s Iceland Music
Awards, causing yours truly to spit his
homeopathic Icelandic Skyr over his
artisan beard shouting, “WTF?? Are
you fucking kidding me Iceland??” as
blobs of creamy cheese splattered the
TV screen. Truly, these people are the
walking dead.
But as Greil Marcus once said, the
sad thing is not that rock and roll is
dead, it’s that we refuse to let it die. No
matter how dull, washed-out or mori-
bund the situation gets, we still cling
on in hope for a band to come along, a
band that sups from the spring of rock
and roll “spirit,” an increasingly hidden
reservoir of bile, sex, fury and death.
Pink Street Boys is one band you can
at least say provides us with that vicari-
ous thrill, if but for a moment. On the
back of some incendiary performances
in bars and venues all over downtown,
PSB have developed a reputation for
chaotic intensity smothered with hairy
chests and squalling feedback. With
energy spurting off in all directions,
they ooze a sweaty, ugly, thuggish mas-
culinity that’s bathed in leather and
homoeroticism (Check out their video
to “Evel Knievel,” where they’ve been
kept captive in Kenneth Anger’s art
dungeon and fed a diet of booze, pop-
pers and paint thinner). True, bands
like Singapore Sling may implore to you
that they “just wanna rock and roll,” but
with PSB, you stand there in the crowd
thinking that at any moment all it would
take is a single spark for it to completely
kick off.
Of course it’s one thing to have a
combustible live sound, but it’s another
transferring it onto record. And while
many have stumbled at this hurdle, I’m
pleased to report that PSB’s latest al-
bum, ‘Hits #1’, manages to hold on and
contain their live energy. Even before
you put the record on the player, the
cover throbs with a sleazy aura with the
schlock horror pen art of Viðar Alexan-
der Jónsson displaying grotesque flesh,
slime, and cartoon violence stained in
sickly purples and greens. This is a re-
cord that doesn’t want to be HEY! nice,
chipper, or pleasant. No, this is an al-
bum that wants to be as icky, nasty, and
dirty (oo-er missus) as possible.
From the opening bars of “Body
Language” that come at you like a how-
itzer before the drums kick in and blow
the doors off, PSB don’t stop to even
think about things like #feelings or cry-
ing while masturbating. Life’s waaay
too short for that. It’s an album that’s a
short sharp shock, clocking in at under
25 minutes (It’s taken me longer go to
the toilet), where the only purpose is
to rock hard with determination, to ex-
plode before they blow themselves out.
And in this barrage of noise, a defi-
nite hat tip goes to PSB for their work
on overall sound of the album (I’m
guessing a large amount that there was
smoke coming from the mixing desk
when Curver Thoroddsen was master-
ing). Amongst the scuzzy redlining mix
of pounding drums, blitzkrieg guitars
and springy bass, ‘Hits #1’ is stuffed
with lots of clever little overdubs,
overloading delay and reverb effects
smearing the vocals until they become
nothing more than a series of abstract
primal howls and shrieks. So far the
only lyrics I can make out are “KICK.
THE. FUCK. OUT!” on “Kick the Trash
Out.” Or at least I think that’s what they
are shouting.
Now, it’s worth noting there’s not
that much in ‘Hits #1’ that you can say
is different, new or even original within
the canon of rock and roll. From Jerry
Lee Lewis to the MC5 to Iggy Pop, punk
and beyond, music of this form has
been played by self-destructive freaks
ever since the guitar became electri-
fied. In fact the semi-previous incarna-
tion of PSB, The Dandelion Seeds, was
very much a cliché-ridden throwback
to 1960s psych hippie bullshit. But you
cannot deny the violent power of ‘Hits
#1’, and the way that PSB uses it as a
blunt, dumb instrument to bludgeon
you with. When they sing “This is rock
and roll/this is what we got/this is how
we do it” on “Anthem,” you know that
this is the only way they can do it. There
is no other option but to go down in a
ball of fury and flames.
- BOB CLUNESS
Pinks Street Boys
Hits #1 (2015)
facebook.com/PinkStreetBoys
KILL! DESTROY!
SCHNELL! AAAARGH!