She Wants Revenge – Self-Titled
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Truly original voices in music today are damn near extinct. What artist can really say they haven’t melded a lifetime of influences to sculpt their sound? At best, you have a well-textured vision, running along a vibe another band has already gotten us comfortable with. At worst, you have a carbon copy, knock-off that might as well play local dives as a blah cover band. When your ears first become acquainted with She Wants Revenge, its impossible to not take a beeline straight to Interpol. Yet Interpol is basically just a derivative of Joy Division with a smack of Depeche Mode. As you dig further into She Wants Revenge’s sonic cache, you see touches of David Bowie, a flicker of the Cure and even contemporaries like Lake Trout. Shoot, the band’s name even sounds like it was cherry picked off a track on a Joy Division album. This amalgamation of sound mesh together to form an enticing album that can’t stake its claim on originality, but knows how to maximize the tools at its musical forefathers. |
Grade: B+ | Genre: Rock
“These Things” unravels like a cross between Depeche Mode and the Cure. The rich synth goodness seeps over pungent lyrics like “she’s in the bathroom/she pleasures herself/says I’m a bad man/she’s locking me out/it’s because of these things.” Its dirty grit that plays out like the morning after a one-night stand, peeling out into the street bleeding with a sick euphoria. The sharp lyrical forked tongue is a reoccurring theme as one song gives way to the next. The most biting look is the ode to violent sex, “Tear You Apart.” Its beat stutter steps along awkwardly pointed as the wave of words expel “I want to hold you close/skin pressed against me tight/lie still close your eyes girl…soft breast beating heart/As I whisper in your ear/I wanna fucking tear you apart.” I think the S&M crowd may have a new theme song to thump from the loud speakers at kinky bondage parties. “Monologue” continues the harsh look at depraved lust, speaking “give me the safe word/and take your hand/and smack me in the mouth my love.”
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Thankfully, the disk has no dead spots to speak of. It retains a fiery consistency that is very welcomed in our singles driven music culture. You can tell these gentlemen put a lot of effort into crafting their compositions. Even the back alley grit carefully marries into the notes by careful design.
The solid consistency of this intriguing effort fleshes out its promise in “Sister” and “Us.” “Sister” is Joy Division for the new century. It has a quiet urgency that fuels on choppy guitars, issued in during the refrains. It sounds like it should be spouting out of a dank club at 2am, sick on the smoke and the smell of sweaty bodies losing themselves to the music. It is a taste of 80s nostalgia that sounds as fresh and inviting as it did when it was wrestling music in a new direction in 1982. “Us” is the reflection of a love evaporated. Pouring over the old pictures painted in happiness and the letters lathered in a brittle caring touch, he spirals through the whirlwind of memories invading him. Justin Warfield’s voice rises and falls with perfection, punctuating lines like “I turned out the lights and imagined you with me/I tried my hardest to cry but it just wouldn’t come.” It’s swimming in relationship purgatory, where the hole of love is too fresh to avoid and the sting of absence is just starting to grip you with relentless abandon. This is a piece with great emotional charge flickering through.
She Wants Revenge debut disk shows extra helpings of promise. There are a lot of good bands fighting for space in the new, new wave, but few that will make their mark beyond the trends, surviving the fad. She Wants Revenge has that potential, coming off this dangerously consistent first effort. Its not going to change the way you look at music, but it will help you get lost in a sound so old that its new again. It’s another reminder that music is a timeless art, built on a chaotic swirl of influences. Will She Wants Revenge use this promising self-titled effort to continue to hone and search out the corners of their sound, or are the boys destined to get stuck in the bargain bin with the one hit wonders? It’s too soon to say for sure. Regardless, I look forward to checking in on these gents once they have a couple years under their belts to see what direction the music pulls these guys.
Release Date: January 31, 2006
