I do like a tasty and nutritious old fashioned slice of ennui and dystopian independent dread.The kind of record that John Peel might have enjoyed and featured on his show backi n 1980 or 1981 when I was just a lad. Yeah. In days of yore.
Low Harness hail from Falmouth in the West Country and Rock a similar sound to New Wave bands like The Passions and The White Lines. Their latest album is Salvo and this comes across as almost onomatopoeic as the album sounds like a skirmish in a larger bloody battle but a finely described and detailed one.
Back at the end of the Seventies and the begnning of the Eighties the dread in the sound of alternative guitar bands was mostly generated by the fear of impending nuclear warfare. The Cold War was still raging. Nowadays the war, the adversary is less specific, The imminent threat less clearly identified. But the sentiment and the fear is as relevant and appealing as ever. This is an excellent record. Low Harness are a splendid and powerful band.
The emotions and sentiments explored on Salvo do not date. Check out the continuing relevance and popularity of The Cure and Joy Division, Not to mention Graham Greene. Or William Blake. The world remains a hostile and frightening place only enhanced by digital advances despite their manifest joys and opportunitues the emotional terror endures.
Perhaps we'll always take solace in bleak but crafted Romanticism just as readers of the Bronte sisters and Wordsworth did back in Vuctorian days. Some modes of expression and creativity maintain their poignancy and scope. Things certainly do here. Thanks to Darren Jones once more for bringing this to my attention. Fab Starbuck. Fill your boots at the grog barrel bonnie lad !
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