(Matador)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Given how much indie rock of the 2000s owed to a small cachet of post-punk bands from twenty years prior, Wire and Gang of Four in particular, it's startling when a new band effortlessly, self-consciously appropriates that same dark, compressed and sustained grit and manages to sound like a unique fixture in a glutted marketplace. Maybe it's because London's Savages choose to draw from a wider range of material, Joy Division at one end but Siouxsie and the Banshees and Pere Ubu at the other, but it's more likely because their debut Silence Yourself is an act of passion. In all its forceful, apocalyptic chaos it sounds so convincingly like a record drawn from the age of Public Image Ltd. and Patti Smith Group (singer Jehnny Beth sounds quite similar to both Smith and Tom Verlaine at times), like a direct outgrowth of the Damned's "New Rose" rather than a multigenerational resurgence -- but this is why it's fresh. Its laundry list of influences is nearly incidental when its impressively direct, unfussy approach amounts to just four people playing music they love, speaking words to the blind. It is to Joy Division as Slanted and Enchanted was to the Velvets. Like Pavement, Savages work hard to conceal their pop songcraft under distortion and muddiness, but this only adds to their energetic mystery.
It's unfair to cast any one member of Savages as more key than any other, but Silence Yourself very simply wouldn't work without the steely, searing focus of Gemma Thompson's rumbling, crunching guitar sound. It can be seductive (amplified, of course, by Ayse Hassan and Fay Milton's excellent garage-band rhythm section), harrowing, graceful, deceptively clean, but most of the time it's in attack mode. For much of the first half of the record, peaking with the maniacal "City's Full," she lays the groundwork for a dead-end punk nuclear blast on top of which Beth can lose her marbles beautifully. Savages are magnetic because they're so fatalistic and serious, like so many great bands of the relevant period, which makes it all the weirder that their record is in the end so delightful, but this music in all its tension and fever is really nothing more or less than great, intense rock & roll -- fun even when it's not "fun."
That makes it sound as if Silence Yourself is a dour affair, but that's not the case at all; it's simply ambitious in its minimalism and devotedly free of flourish. For some of us, this is the motivational workout record of the year. Put it on and you can't help but want to do something, clean your living room or brush the cat or paint the walls or run laps around the property, but it's not sitting-still music. What it really demands is pogoing or sitting entranced at the base of a stage, watching these great musicians perform and screaming along to "YOU HAVE... NO FACE" or the Spectorian "I'm ready I'm ready / when you hit me I'm READY." If the instant classic "Husbands" didn't already generate the feeling of being in a smoky club during the Thatcher era, the complete album will blaze away any doubts.
Savages may be pure threat musically, but their songs also come with a sense of triumph -- and a sly humor and Rolling Stones-vintage attitude problem (what could be purer?) suggested immediately by the willfully bizarre sampling of a Cassavetes movie. The threat and dread come loudest and clearest: while the songs are generally bashed out with abandon and then discarded, the band is quick to shrug off any questions about versatility with variations like "Strife," slowing down to a deliberate pregnant plod and doing things with you that you will never tell your mum; "Waiting for a Sign" takes this further to a sad, menacing guitar mourn -- the guitar rather than voice taking the emotional lead, brilliant as the vocal is -- and proceeds to thrust with a quiet-loud pacing that somehow manages never to allow its tension to break. But is there joy in all this? Absolutely; turn it up louder. You could argue that even the creation of music this defined by throwback yet wholly inventive and crafty is in itself an act of stubborn joy, and one of the most assured and powerful rock-band moments of recent vintage.
Easy as it is to single out Thompson's guitar or Beth's singing -- and it's all too tempting -- what makes Savages already such a treasure of a band is their interplay and precision. Post-punk bands like Gang of Four and Wire were always built on this, but Savages are more interested in carefully sustained chaos; the beautiful paranoia of their intriguingly expressive sound is already impressively assured. For every breathless climax ("SHE WILL SHE WILL SHE WILL SHE WILL SHE WILL SHE WILL") there is a stunning movement like "Marshal Dear," which more than anything else here suggests the incredible rage of an antecedent like Love Is All or X-Ray Spex, and not merely because of its saxophone solo. This is a song with genuine anger and bottom-heavy desperation, a song that doesn't seem to be a mere act of wish-fulfillment navel gaze when Beth calmly announces "I hope you're breathing your last breath." I have no idea whether they Mean It or whatever because that's irrelevant anyway; what matters to me is that they enjoy sounding like they Mean It, as though even in this commodified age there can still be some act of rebellion so long as it's the culmination of something personal. That's as moving as, well, punk rock.
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