Song(s) of the Day # 3,655 Porcelain

 

                                            

                                                    'History repeats itself. Isn't that a shame...'

Porcelain is just your posh crockery isn't it. The plates and bowls you keep at the back of your kitchen cabinets for the rare occasions when you're planning something really special for honoured houseguests and need to really impress. 

Like the episodes of Bewitched when Darrin's boss Larry Tate came round to dinner and Samantha needed to pull out all the stops. Which Sam generally did by breaking the cardinal rule and casting some spells, much to Darron's obvious distress amd acute embararassment. 

  Porcelain are a noise band from Austin, Texas. Their singer sounds quite a lot like Protomartyr's singer Joe Casey. This resemblance and impression is so instant, enduring and overwhelming that it prevents me from liking their itherwise commendable eponymous album as much as I might.

It's an excellent Post Punk complaint and gesture exercise in almost every respect apart from the Protomartyr factor which drifts over the record almost incessantly for the record's forty minute duration like a sad and depressed black cloud hanging overhead  .The rest of the band clearly love those Detroit noisnik mieces to pieces too and tailor their drum, guitar and bass patterns accordingly.

Don't get me wrong Porcelain put on a splendid show. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all that. This is a finely wrought melidrama and I enjoy it immensely.In fact more and more every time as an exercise in undiluted passion about the state of play right now.  They're just best advised to fotge their own path more fully next time round.