The shady degenerates behind Cracked Ankles have developed quite a fine tuned freak magnet. I know it looks like they hang about in carparks with a bag of cans shouting stuff at pigeons but you’re missing the subtleties in their method. Transmitting on some arcane frequency or something, maybe using sonar, somehow they call the other punk rock weirdos into their orbit. So it goes with this latest bunch of morbid shut-ins. Nervy trio dead things probably have more animal skulls than you’d like dotted about their house and spend too much time online looking up grisly murders (but not enough checking whether they share their name with a truly terrible L.A. metal-core band.)
Their take on the venerable traditions of the murder ballad and/or death rock is particularly niche being concerned with historic murders in their home county of Lancashire. The songs all have the names of killers and the lyrics are largely blunt statements of fact about their crimes. The tunes have a similar stark minimalism to them, tense and driving blasts of unease. Sort and sharp, the whole EP only just breaks ten minutes. It’s a bit like if a true crime podcast was a terse noise rock band.
Or maybe not. Podcasts are all speculation and multiple possible timelines and whatever. dead things don’t really indulge any of that caper, it’s mostly blank eyed reportage. The lack of affect married to the cheerless assault of the music giving it a chilling edge. When you consider the extent to which murder mysteries and true crime are enjoyed as cosy entertainments and how old these crimes are, it’s remarkable they somehow make it feel uncomfortable. Wired and urgent ‘Max Haslam’ tells of “the dwarf who battered a woman to death, hung her dog” in repeating lines, holding its nerve even as “due to his height he faced a record breaking execution”.
Tragedy plus time equals punk rock angst. Obviously, the stories are extreme and quite colourful but dead things don’t pull any lurid shock-rock moves they sort of let the details speak for themselves. These cases are all online if you want to know more. The exception to their clipped riffs and barked vocals is the slower menace of ‘John Simpson’. In which he kills his bride to be on their wedding day. In this one the victim, Ann, is given a voice in the backing vocals crying out “My! Heart! Bleeds! On Church Street”. How long they can keep this very specific theme I don’t know, is Lancashire’s history as blood soaked as Midsomer? In the meantime this is, ahem, killer stuff.
