Saturday, March 26, 2016

Song of the Day # 797 A.R.E. Weapons


In early 2001, an it's a sobering thought for me to realise that this is now fifteen years back, a friend and I visited New York with his girlfriend, with a view to moving there permanently. It was probably nothing more than a pipedream. It was round about the time when everybody had been priced out of Manhattan and the city was becoming a rich man's playground.

The main source of inspiration for us to uproot ourselves there was the flood of great music coming out of the place at the time. The Strokes, most immediately of course, but also Walkmen, Moldy Peaches, Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and this lot, A.R.E. Weapons.

Although it's almost impossible to mention their name without talking about Suicide, the seventies Punk pioneers from whom they plunder their sound, A.R.E. Weapons' records still sound spoofily exciting. A cartoon dream of the lurid technicolor of life in the big city. Quite ridiculous on every level, but being ridiculous has never disqualified Pop or Rock and Roll music from sounding great. Hunt down anything from their self-titled 2003 debut.

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