Imperial Wax – Gastwerk Saboteurs

Saustex

It’s a band you know, but not for being this band. And their press thingy doesn’t mention that previous band. So I’m not going to either.

These last few days, Roky Erickson went clog-popping into some other dimension. And I’m just going to say that one of the things that has always put me off a lot of psych and, uh, “this kind of thing” is all of that otherworldly stuff. There’s something desperately ungainly about people doing that, particularly British folk.

So Imperial Wax get top marks from the off for opener “The Art Of Projection” talking about “the king of council flats”. Some things are just that much more convincing from British folk and that kind of drab everypersoning works well for me.

I’m not even sure if this is even particularly a “psych” record. There’s bits of, like, those kind of effects and reverby vocals and that sort of thing, but there’s sprayed chunks of thick riffs and kind of post-Wire-y stuff, though not quite as austere as all that lot (thankfully). And, like, a sense that there’s something more unheimlich about mundanities (“…keyboard coward / Never sleeps / And he never showers”).

Of course, I said at the beginning that I wasn’t going to mention the previous band, but there’s a few telltale bits here and there — Cowboy George‘s guitar on rockabilly-ish “Plant The Seed”, f’rinstance. But not enough that you’d know if you didn’t know, y’know? More a vibe and competence than anything that’d be obvious. And possibly a sense of lyricism that’s witty and sinister (“Sleeping with an open mouth / You let the spiders clamber out”).

Press release lists a bunch of usual suspects — it’s de rigeur to listen to The Stooges and Captain Beefheart — but they’ve clearly also listened to Little Richard, old doo-wop, Howlin’ Wolf and that. It’s got that sound to it, you know? What I mean is that there’s a lot around this which seems like it’d be entirely run-of-the-mill in other hands, but all of this is clipped and sharp and well put together: “Rammy Taxi Illuminati”‘s sudden switch into double time doesn’t outstay its welcome, and Christ knows that too many bands will take a three-minute idea and make it last twenty minutes (or a whole career if you’re Spacemen 3).

Possibly the only disappointment is that two of the album’s instrumentals (ahem: “Wax On” and “Wax Off”) are jammy vignettes rather than whole bits. But that’s by no means a criticism as, again, a lot of this stuff is so easily be a dribbly, overly long wankfest. Possibly this is made more pointed by the fact that the album’s closer “Night Of The Meek” is an instrumental banger in the Can mode (and I mean the actual Can mode, rather than the “it sounds like Stone Roses but Can are cooler” way). Swirly and tightly drummed, and some nice clean guitars and treetrunk bass, and all of that lot. Again, could easily have outstayed its welcome, but neglects to do so in a tidy nine or so minutes.

Haven’t seen them live yet but, well, this definitely sounds like it’s going to be savage on stage, so get thee down to their tour, innit.

-Kev Nickells-