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album // Pull In Emergency
According to guitarist Alice
Costelloe when interviewed by BBC 6 Music's Marc Riley,
Pull In Emergency existed for five years. They
released their debut album on Mute Records in 2010
before promptly calling it quits. It's a common story for indie
bands; except that Pull In Emergency were literally a bunch of kids.
Costelloe was in the band between the ages of 12 and 17. Pull In
Emergency emerged initially, on Mute, via their Irregulars
series, releasing 'Follow' and 'In Silence / Planes' (re-recorded
versions of which appear on the album) before heading into Milk
Studios in London to record this album with esteemed Seattle producer
Gordon Raphael.
The five-piece band consisted of Faith Barker
(lead vocals), Alice Costelloe (guitar, vocals), Frankie
Bowmaker (lead guitar), Dylan Williams
(bass, vocals) and Suneet Chohan (drums). Pull
In Emergency was supported by three singles, 'Fifteen Years',
the double 'A-side' 'Backfoot / The Problem' and 'Everything Is
The Same'. Gordon Raphael is best known as the frenetic producer
of the first two albums by The Strokes, Is This It and
Room On Fire. His production gives Pull In Emergency
a sheen and depth that most young indie bands would never get an
opportunity to have applied to their music. Occasionally, as on
'The Problem' or 'Cold Hands', the whining, spiralling guitars sound
like the work of Strokes guitarists Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick
Valensi, but that's no surprise.
Forging comparisons to The Strokes is a needless
and lazy exercise, but one final point on that before I move on:
when they first arrived, all loud, distorted and snotty, The Strokes
seemed to be the very embodiment of New York punk's finest moments,
all CBGBs uptight angst and dangerous edginess. For what it's worth,
Pull In Emergency takes those punk cues and extend them far further.
I've been listening to this album in my car for the past week and
it is one that deserves to be played as loud as possible, to the
point where your eyes are ringing, the sounds beginning to distort
and you start to imagine yourself in a small, dirty venue pogoing
like a lunatic and dodging plastic cups that you hope are filled
with beer dregs and not something more sinister. Except that I'd
be at the back, feeling too old and trying to work out whether I'm
old enough to be the band members' father.
Reference points abound. At times I'm reminded of
the likes of Nineties UK punk-influenced indie waifs like Echobelly
or Elastica, at times of 'Union City Blues'-era Blondie ('Song 11'
has that same emotionally-fraught sound), at times the frantic,
squalling messiness of Dinosaur Jr. or Sonic
Youth (opener 'Everything Is The Same' takes its main riffs
from the J Mascis / Thurston Moore
school of guitar masochism). I'm also reminded of the work of thwarted
Haywards Heath punk-pop Nineties band Fungal Noise, who you won't
have heard of, but should have. Occasionally the lyrics are a little
on the naive side, leading toward reminders of the type of expressive
writing your English teacher would ask you to compose in the style
of some famous poet ('Cold Hands', with its effected tale about
a loved one successively stripping the singer of her body parts
and organs is probably the best / worst example of that) and which
seemed utterly highbrow at the time and now seems a little on the
silly side (I have plenty of examples of this myself). Elsewhere,
the lyrics are clever and insightful into young love's challenges
and take me back to when I thought I knew it all, even though I
was only fifteen. Kids, eh?
If I have one criticism, it's one that I often have
about a lot of English female rock singers, wherein they seem to
try to ape a particular, slightly arch and detached style. It leads
to punk canonisation, for sure, but it's all a bit samey. 'In Silence'
is probably my least favourite track on this album for that very
reason, which is a shame because sonically that track's
storming guitars and rolling drums are intensely captivating (there's
even a fantastic middle eight wherein they seem to blend together
Dave Brubeck's 'Take Five' and the more stuttering elements of King
Crimson's In The Court Of The Crimson King). When Barker
plays down that style, such as on the uptight, toned down punk of
'Backfoot', I'm far happier.
Alas, a follow-up album seems remote. Costelloe
– post A-level results – is now one half of Mute act
Big Deal. Pull In Emergency is mostly
just a brilliant example of how young bands are able to draw heavily
upon the best part of forty years of music – specifically
here the punk of both US and UK vintages – and adapt them,
thanks to glossy production ethics, to the contemporary indie scene
of today. Just remember to play it as loud as you can stand.
cd/i:
1. Everything Is The Same
2. In Silence
3. Backfoot
4. Fifteen Years
5. The Problem
6. What You Say
7. Cold Hands
8. Planes
9. Song 11
10. Hold Still
single // Everything Is The Same
Released as a free one-track download from the Pull
In Emergency blog.
i:
1. Everything Is The Same
single // Fifteen Years
Review forthcoming.
i:
1. Fifteen Years (Single Version)
2. Fifteen Years
3. Follow
4. Fifteen Years (Instrumental)
single // The Problem
Review forthcoming.
i:
1. The Problem
2. Backfoot
3. Song 11 (Acoustic)
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