Busting Up The Ballroom

I was not expecting this. As always I am procrastinating from doing any actual ‘work’ by listening to music – and NY band Ballroom’s debut 12” EP dropped into my email. For whatever reason I downloaded the album without listening to a sample of the music (with the amount of music that I get a day, and the limit my work has on downloads, you have to be extremely picky – although the fact it’s on Ever/Never Records, who put out Degreaser and Wilful Boys (who shares band members, along with connections to Home Blitz), might have been a persuading factor) – but it is clear that this was meant to be, as Ballroom has blown me away (and successfully wasted a good hour of the day, so double win). The visceral burst of chaos and barely-bridled gritty aggression launches out at you and grips your by the throat. For whatever reason, I felt ‘I’ll Be Coming Back’ could have fit into the Australian noise rock tradition, and whilst not as unhinged as say Bird Blobs or Deaf Wish, there is a pub rock nihilism that lurks beneath the serrated exterior. Like a seething mass of heaving paranoid psyches in one sweat-stained room, Ballroom cannonballs through from start to finish, invoking violence with a sense of desperate, orgiastic gratification. I’m sold.