Space Siren - Mr Wagner, Please Give Us A Call (2012)

Yep Space Siren starts off like prime Sonic Youth, squalling and buzzing with drawling attitude and insistent battering guitar. And then abruptly changes down a gear or two into fuzzed out My Bloody Valentine drowsy-voiced dreaminess. And the heart sinks a bit. Cos you know there’s a thousand MBV/Mary Chain pasticheurs out there adding very little to the legacy. But you keep listening and the heart lifts again. Not because they change tack especially (though if you’re totting up the references the Breeders will earn more than a few ticks) but because they get it intangibly right.

They get the repetition right. They get the ebb and flow right. The dreamy stuff nods and jerks like a head on the edge of sleep. The more driven stuff has just the right hints of rock ‘n roll and just the right resistance to slipping into either safe tunefulness (though they do a mean ba ba ba chorus) or pointless discord (though they can make a right racket). And the adornments. The little noises blibbling and sqeeeling around the edges add far more than the bog-standard effects-pedal-recreation-of-the-wall-of-sound. If you’ve been around the block a few times with this sort of stuff, you suddenly realise it sounds like listening to it the first time sounded. Which was pretty great, wasn’t it?