Well tap my toes and infect my ears with melody – it seems that Lovvers write pop songs after all.
But these ain’t any old pop songs; there’s none of the schlock that’s more than likely running through your head right now. These are songs possessed by the same visceral strangeness the public felt when Elvis landed from Mars and taught white kids what their waist was for, and though they hailing from the English midlands, Lovvers are so damn good at stirring thoughts of influential stateside acts (think The Replacements, Hüsker Dü, and even Les Savy Fav) you may mistake them for a bunch of Yanks. But while we all appreciate that the Americans have the best tunes right now, Lovvers are possessed with more than enough ideas to give the Stars and Stripes brigade a run for their money.
Don’t enter the experience expecting gloss, though. In the manner of truly great groups like The Minutemen, the songs here are buried beneath a layer of fuzz – genius found in poverty, great art found in the scrap yard. Vocals are indistinct, lyrics near indecipherable, laying a veil of mystery over the album. Every expense is spared on ‘OCD Go Go Go Girls’, because they’ve got nothing to play with. Sure, Lovvers travelled all the way to Portland, Oregon to lay this thing down on tape; but that was just them getting a little further away from the problem, and closer to the solution.
As good as last year’s seven-track EP ‘Think’ was, few (if any) fans felt the band would make such a quantum leap as this with their debut album. Indebted to the great British songwriting tradition as much as they are US punks, Lovvers seem to take notes from Bowie, Swell Maps, Wire and early Creation alongside the furious modern inventions of groups such as No Age and Times New Viking. Fearful of Pro Tools, these are simply great songs striped of any computer-aided illusions. ‘D. Boon’ is a tribute to the fallen leader of the Minutemen, and contains all the inspiration energy of his legendary San Francisco group. ‘Creepy Crawl’ is all punk riffs and bluster but without the clichés – recalling Wire but without seeming retro. The title track (almost) and lead single, ‘OCD Go Go Girls’, is a snake-hipped Bowie salute that seems even more way out than the Spiders From Mars, while ‘100 Flowers’ has all the beauty and menace of Mother Nature when you’ve really pissed her off.
It would be easy to sift through this album and cite the reference points – there’s a lot of them, but that’s not what this album is about. And anyway, such nods appear primarily because Lovvers are clearly huge music fans, making music with hearts in the right place. Inspired by their favourite records, they seem content to capture the shock of the new without merely treading in their heroes footsteps. It’s not perfect, and on occasions borders on the repetitive, but when it clicks ‘OCD Go Go Go Girls’ contains moments that stick a goofy grin on your face and makes you want to grab strangers by the ear and shout: listen to this!
7/10
