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| Termite - Growth |
Termite – Growth
There are a lot of awful band
names out there at the moment (I’m looking at you Fun and Everything
Everything) but then I guess, much like fossil fuels, the world is running out
of high quality band names. So colour me surprised to see Termite pop up in my
inbox with what I think is a great band name. Simple, to the point and ever so
slightly disturbing... also, completely at odds with their music.
Termite are a Huddersfield
quartet that have grown from an original duo (by adding members, not some weird
form of genetic splicing) to create so impressively expansive and explorative
music. The bands latest three track offering, ‘Growth’, is a mixture of styles,
influences and genres that gel wonderfully to create a cacophony of the
familiar and the surprising. Take opening track ‘These Clowns’ as a prime
example, opening up like a jangly, 90s Britpop anthem from Blur, Super Furry
Animals or Octopus with lackadaisical vocals and sketchy guitars before descending
in to the kind of riffs that dEUS, Metal Molly or Pavement would be proud of.
Then, out of the distortion, comes the kind of optimistic folk that Fleet Foxes
peddle to great effect. No one track on this EP comes in at under four minutes
and the fact that they’ve allowed themselves this space to create which makes
the music of Termites so wonderfully imaginative.
‘Memory Loss’ is a much more
mellow track at first glance with a lazily picked guitar melody echoing out
from the back of a smoky bar at the break of dawn – somewhere in Paris one
Autumnal morning. The guitar work is pure Graham Coxon and the layers build up
to create a crescendo of distortion, sustain and, well, just raw power! There
are Jazz elements to this but more in the ability of the musicians to change tempo
and mood at the drop of a hat rather than the tunes themselves. Final track, ‘Kettle
Of Fish’, however, opens like the soundtrack to a cheap French detective movie
before blasting you with a chorus full of bitterness and despair that features
the stylish couplet “A broken droid searching for a way to mend / Looking out
for a dead-end waiting round the bend”. I hesitate to pigeon hole this as geek
rock or anything so generic but there is a definite and specific market for
this out there and most of that market have a nerdy tattoo and have at least
one Grandaddy CD in their collection. Or Eels.
More information: http://termite.bandcamp.com/