WARPAINT

WARPAINT (Rough Trade)

16/20

Forget the oft-venerated pretty-all-girl-group-do-post-punk shtick, that’s just ingratiating bullshit. What’s far cooler and more interesting about Warpaint is their studied understanding of subtly and its merits, where the LA quartet conjures saccharine melodies that percolate so languorously, they could slowly make your teeth rot. Or, when they segue – totally undetected – into those protracted percussive codas borrowed from tribal séances; you know, the ones that gently spook you out of your own daydreams. The thing is, when guitarists/vocalists Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman sing, “don’t you battle, we’ll kill you, rip you up and tear you in two” on their self-titled second LP, it’s this canny sleight of hand that holds testament to Warpaint’s ability to remain cool. And interesting.

Where their 2010 debut The Fool took its cues from slowcore revisionism and being an anhedonic Briton in the ‘80s, Warpaint is much less encumbered by the past, more informed by the Californian High Desert (the place of its recording, Joshua Tree) and A-list production dynamos Flood and Nigel Godrich. These thematic and geographical elements are scorched across its surface, with CC’s sludgy dirges nodding towards the no-fi desert rock of Kyuss as seen through Low’s narcotic haze. There’s sassiness too: a Beck-y hip-hop beat complete with shamanistic “boomshackalackas” (on Hi) and Revolver traced backwards guitars (on Go In) are welcome additions to Warpaint’s remit for brooding slow burners. That said, this time around there’s method in the melancholia: a percussive arch on which the no-thrills hooks of singles Love Is To Die (an unconventional take on a fucked-up romance) and Biggy (gasping for breath vocals built around a foreboding Moog swagger) can beguile, until those brittle parts bond in subtle darkness to become a fully-formed whole.

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Words: Joshua Nevett