07 10

Menace Beach Ratworld Memphis Industries

19.01.15

Menace Beach are one of ‘those’ bands – a roll-call of members from other underground acts (Hookworms, Pulled Apart by Horses and Sky Larkin), its almost as if they were custom-built to make indie-bores like Marc Riley salivate.

But don’t let that put you off: they’re great.

Album opener Come On Give Up is art-pop that doesn’t leave you feeling frustrated and fidgety. Drop Outs is sexy and swaggering in the same way that the Dandy Warhols were for a bit: raucous but with super-slick guitar sounds. Ratworld is mostly pitched somewhere between shimmery surf-noir and gonzo Britpop-era squalling guitar/pop-hook vocals, providing a clever contrast for shoegaze tracks like Blue Eye (Liza Violet’s soft and sultry vocals set over a wall of guitar drone).

The closing track Fortune Teller is the pick of the bunch: sneering pop gold-dust under a valium-tinted veneer. If their reference points sound a little retro, that’s because Menace Beach wear their cultural influences firmly on their sleeve. This can occasionally mean that their style sounds somewhat affected: a coded message about their record collection, rather than a free expression of new ideas. But hey, it’s a post-internet world, and there ain’t nothing wrong with an homage. Ratworld is a tour de force of premium 90s influences that is all the more vital and compelling for its grounding in the past.