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Released on October 2, 2015 via Solar Flare Records
I’ve got a problem with noise rock. Not the genre per se (although some of it is so wilfully angular and atonal that it’s just annoying), but the name of it. After all, isn’t all rock supposed to be noisy? As my grandfather told my mother when she first played Elvis Presley’s ‘Hound Dog’ to him: “What is this? It sounds as if he is singing in a barrel.”
Pigs – so named for the word’s simplicity so “critics don’t fuck it up”, they once said – are plonked in the noise rock bracket and, yes, they sure are noisy. And they rock. Man, do they rock.
Sure, their latest album begins with an instrumental called ‘A Great Blight’, which grates. But by 30 seconds into the second song, ‘The Life in Pink’, following a proto-funk drum-beat intro that harks back to Flowers of Romance era Public Image Limited, it’s full of big riffs, unlikely hooks and lead vocals injected with welcome sleaze from Dave Curran, who is also known as the bassist from Unsane.
The palette expands as the album progresses, with buzzsaw punk, a dash of country, a little heaviosity and even – gasp – banjos included, but it is essentially a fun (I think), noisy continuation of (and improvement on) Pigs’ début You Ruin Everything. And throughout, those drums – they sound amazing, like Jim Paradise is playing in your very own bedroom.
‘Bet it All on Black’ follows ‘The Life in Pink’ and is almost three songs in one: a driving redneck hardcore anthem to start with, a sludgy middle section and a slow, epic instrumental outro. ‘Amateur Hour in Dick City’ begins with satisfying slabs of guitar, but in the middle pops up one of the catchiest hooks you’ll ever hear – I defy the reptilian ‘catchy hook’ part of your brain not to demand listening to it repeatedly. It’s an awesome song. ‘Mope’ and ‘Wrap it Up’ don’t quite hit the heights of what has come before, but they are still loud, brash homes of noisy guitar goodies.
The banjo makes an appearance on ‘Mouth Dump’, which has two people bemoaning the compromises society must make because of the people running things. The instrument provides an odd juxtaposition to the sober subject matter. The volume goes back up for ‘Make Sure to Forget’ and ‘Bug Boy’, the latter of which features Julie Christmas from fellow rowdy New York outfit Made Out of Babies on vocals.
The album’s title track is next and it almost sounds like a punk band covering a disco song. Almost. It scarcely prepares the listener for the near eight-minute finale, ‘Donnybrook’, which, fact fans, is not only a Dublin suburb, but also archaic Antipodean slang for a fight. It rumbles and snarls along at dirge speed and apart from a brief interlude where the guitar goes clean and everything veers towards “pastoral”, it is bleak and ugly. It’s as if the band had saved up all their anger for this song. For all the vitriol, it still maintains a semblance of melody and the wide-eyed, widescreen sound is a brilliant finish to an excellent album.
Yes, it’s all noisy. But it’s rock. It’s supposed to be.
