It seems slightly strange that Montreal band Pottery are only now putting out their debut album Welcome to Bobby's Motel as they seem to have been around for a long time already. They're certainly not a band lacking in ideas, but they won't be to everyone's taste as they tend to have a kitchen sink approach to the songwriting, an don't tend to draft and upgrade their product as much as they might do.
Most immediately they remind me of Arcade Fire, (and explicitly their chanelling of Talking Heads), and Parquet Courts. As with these bands, it's nie on impossible not to hear their influences popping through their songs as they are quite upfront about them, I'd be reasonably sure in Pottery's case that they've listened to a lot of early Eighties Post Punk and Independent guitar classics in their time. Particularly those which involved white boys getting funky. A Certain Ratio, Higsons, Pigbag, Josef K and The Clash of Overpowered by Funk, come to mind.
The songs are almost all cluttered, and this means they have a high hit and miss factor, things that sound closer to Pelican West that Fear of Music. It's good to hear alternative bands that are not just trying to sound like Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive, but this record both overwhelmed and underwhelmed me on first listen and I think I'll go back to The True Story of Bananagun, (which I reviewed here yesterday) for a more impressive lesson on how to go about messing with the past.
No comments:
Post a Comment