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Art Brut 'Bang Bang Rock & Roll'
With a minutes-instead-of-months songwriting gestation period, a naively cocksure confidence and an enthusiasm for simply making music, against the odds Art Brut may just have turned out one of the debuts of the year.
Everything about London five-piece Art Brut incites a line-in-the-sand discussion. It’s unlikely that you merely “don’t mind” Art Brut. From Eddie Argos’ Mark E Smith delivery (“yes this is my singing voice, it’s not irony”) to the band’s ramshackle sound and irreverent stream of conscious approach to lyrics, every facet of Art Brut urges you to either get involved or get lost.
Bursting onto the nation’s radar last year with the single ‘Formed A Band’ (about, you guessed it, forming a band), Argos and his band of art-punk misfits quickly earned the (misplaced) reputation as the novelty act of the post-Libertines New Cross scene. But while the rest of their much-hyped peers have either gone stellar or back underground, Art Brut nonchalantly put out a set of charming, incisive and witty comments on the life that surrounds them.
While the band themselves surprise in the ‘band that can’t play turn out to be pretty good’ stakes, the centrepiece is undeniably Argos. Already tagged as a young Jarvis Cocker, the entire album is littered with lyrical gems that never fail to raise a smile. From his triumphant call of “I’ve seen her naked! Twice!” (‘Good Weekend’) to the warning to the Doherty generation to “Stay off the smack!” (‘My Little Brother’), the frontman's portrayal of working class romanticism is accomplished enough that you can already here the click-click of the overwhelmingly gushing broadsheet journalist's computer keyboards bored with Mike Skinner’s recent hibernation.
Other highlights include the lounge-core of ‘Moving To L.A.’ (documenting, well, you get the picture…) featuring suitably sunny backing vocals and the title track’s tribute to the intoxicating power of love and music. ‘Stand Down’ strays from the standard Brut mould telling a story of the dismal failure of Italian terrorist Enrique Gatti, while ‘Emily Kane’ blurs the line between reality with it’s ‘Idiots Guide To Romantic Fixations’.
Only on the disposable punk stomp of ’18,000 Lira’ and the disturbingly paranoid thrash of ‘Fight’ do the band fall down, and how this record will stand up to repeated listens remains to be seen. But this matters little as by embracing the same DIY ethic immortalised by Sniffin’ Glue fanzine with it’s “This is a chord, this is another, this is a third. Now form a band’ instruction, Art Brut have gone one better. They’ve learnt the chords, formed the band and gone on to create one of the most excitingly vibrant records of the year.
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