Hot on the heels of the Drecksound LP, the third NOTS LP finds Hash Redactor‘s rhythm section Charlotte Watson and Meredith Lones reconvening with singer / guitarist /keyboardist Natalie Hoffmann for another high-intensity post-punk charge, smashing what came before out of the way.
Since last year, NOTS have lost Alexandra Eastburn, and what seems to have happened is that the trio has become tighter, with very little light shining through the chinks in their armour. Recorded live in the studio, the album manages to capture the driven desire and also the rhythmic intensity that is their calling card. It feels as though the spiky, squalling guitar and Natalie’s distracted, distorted vocals are a form of texture that embellishes the bludgeoning rhythms.
I think when you have a bassist and drummer that are so in tune, you need to do what you can to make the most of them. The songs shoot out in three- or four-minute bursts and rattle past you like tracer fire, with Natalie’s impressionist poetry entwining itself into your mind; I particularly like the couplet “Seasick powdered plans dissolve like sound”. There is something about Ut in some of the ways that the songs are constructed, but they are less sprawling. Their formula is one that works perfectly and there is enough variety here — as well as there being little time for the listener to draw breath — that makes the experience quite thrilling. The opener “Low” is quite claustrophobic and the lyrics have a certain desperate perspective that suits the vocal style. The yelping delivery sounds as though it was captured with Natalie standing right at the back, hidden away behind the drums and blurred by effects, which goes even further to push the rhythm section to the forefront. They take no prisoners and there is little let-up, preventing the barrelling drummer from giving anything more than the simplest of fills, but even these are delivered with a certain panache. The opening two tracks have a kind of scree of guitar that lurks in the background along with the vocals, but on “Floating Hand”, they are replaced by spacey keyboard sounds that push the song into the outer reaches, with even the drum tone changing slightly to accompany it. The keys allow the bass to call the shots and there is an interesting juxtaposition on “In Glass” between the ephemeral nature of the keyboards and the solidity of the rhythm.The short, sharp lines of Natalie’s poetry sit perfectly with the stabbing guitar and it even has the chance to come to the fore on “Persona”, unusually bullying the bass into the background and linking arms with the tribal toms to inject a touch of Sonic Youth to the proceedings. Some of the bass lines are irresistible though, and Meredith might be my new bass hero as she fires her way through the album. Handclap snaps and a ’60s sci-fi vibe invade “Rational Actor”, and the mini-instrumental ‘Far Reaching Shadows” shows a whole other world of NOTS just waiting to be illuminated; but they are far too impatient for that and charge wildly on to the end of the album. “I walk on empty streets in my mind”, Natalie opines in a bruised yelp on closer “Built Environment” — but by then NOTS have cast their spell and beaten you into submission.
-Mr Olivetti-
