Song(s) of the Day # 2,648 Fake Fruit

 

Post-Punk seems to be absolutely everywhere nowadays. For something that in its first incarnation seemed genuinely abrasive, threatening and on the outside of things, (it certainly very rarely made the actual charts), it now comes across as part of the furniture of Rock and Roll, a set of tropes available to all that can be revisited and rehashed seemingly indefinitely. 

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Plenty of wonderful bands have dabbled with this basic toolkit with wonderful results in recent years. Protomartyr, Total Control, Fontaines D.C, Goat Girl and my most recent discoveries Fievel is Glauque, come immediately to mind. But there is also plenty of stuff that seems to be going through the motions to me and barely adding to the conversation. I won't name guilty parties.

So now we have Oakland Fake Fruit's eponymous debut and it's plainly apparent from its opening jagged chords that its anothe Post Punk record and  very good one. Rather like Courtney Barnett deciding she prefers Pylon to The Velvet Underground.Eleven well scrubbed but highly likeable tunes. Angular, melodic and occasional confrontational, but still a record you could probably take home and play to your mother, particular if she was into the original bands first time round.

In Swing and Miss Fake Fruit seem to have a go at one of the most wonderful riffs and moments in of all The Who's I Can't Explain. It's a reminder that even Post Punk itself didn't come entirely out of a void, even if it tried to come across and often felt like it did immediately. This is a band with a genuinely affecting pop sensibility, even if it's nominally coming in from the margins. It's rather different to say exactly what the margins are these days.Perhaps it doesn't really matter. 

This is a highly infectious album. It definitely feels like one I'll want to come back to lots over the coming months, which is more than I can say for example for the recent Dry Cleaning album which garnered so much, (I would say unwarranted attention). Fake Fruit doesn't really push originality or innovation envelopes, but it's bright and shiny and very more-ish. That's more than good enough for me.