They Don't Make Nosferatu D2s Like They Used To

Another day, another weird pun-named band. But the ubiquitously-monikered Nosferatu D2 came about some eleven years ago, and disbanded two years later, so your chance to herald or heckle the duo for their choice of title has truly come and gone. But you can prick your ears on what they sounded like thanks to the reissuing madness of Audio Antihero (who put out physical copies of Frog’s last two releases - and I am about to head out to Jazz Servant Quarters tonight to see 'em). Basically AA was started in 2009 to release the band’s “lost” LP, We're Gonna Walk Around This City With Our Headphones On To Block Out The Noise, on cassette. It is surprising just how well the album still holds up today. The sibling duo have everything that should have made them massive in their 2006 heyday - you can hear Los Campesinos!, Frightened Rabbit, The Twilight Sad and Danananackroyd here. There are the spiked and verbose lyrics, spiked and virile instrumentation that is tightly coiled and leaping in tangential sonic corridors at the drop of a hat, spiked and hilarious song titles (such as 'We'll Play "The Power of Love" By Frankie Goes to Hollywood A Thousand Times Tonight' and 'The Kids From Fame' on the subsequent Older, Sadder, Wiser EP) - acerbic, tangled, nervous energy abounds. Darkly emotional, acridly bitter, snarkily serrated - Nosferatu D2 should have been so, so much more. At least we have this legacy to latch on to...

Bastard Boys Are Giggling Through Their Teeth

NY crooked losers loose in the Big Apple Giggly Boys have launched their debut album Bastards Of Young, and it is great - weird, beguiling, cracked. I was a big fan of their EP . (the cover my fiancee claims looks like me - she's on fire tonight, gloves are off), and the album veers into Spray Paint territory on opener 'The Hall', a track seemingly equally indebted to Ranaldo's Sonic Youth left-field takes on straighter rock. 'Crazy From The Heat' continues the cavernous production and Mike Zorman's moaned, quasi-barked and clipped vocals, yet there is a coldness here that evokes Scandi goth punk (the juxtaposition is in the name...) 'Butter Banquet' is more diseased, a (C)ramped sense of humour infiltrating these darker riffs and claustrophobic rolls, albeit with some slowed art-rock interludes and a glammed up lead back to the fever. 'Weird Lie' and 'Tiny Taste' again take a Ranaldo hue, but also evoke mid-career Blank Realm (possibly in the Daniel Spencer-esque vocal delivery). You can tell that I haven't made any Protomartyr references here, although you can hear echoes in 'Midnight Ones' or the similarly-named 'Darker Shade Of Pale'. Maybe because Bastards Of Young is so kaleidoscopic in sonic range that the references are spread far and wide. 'Country Lee' is something I wish Brisbane band-in-hiatus Nova Scotia had written. Now I doubt that Giggly Boys are into those guys - but the connections to Australian and American bands that flirt with mainstream composition before dragging them on wider, weirder slipstreams is clear. The throwback closer 'Whatever' is great too. Let's hope that these Bastards Of Young never get old - this is great stuff.

Grab the record through This Ain't Heaven Recordings here. If you are in New York tonight, head to The Gateway where Giggly Boys play alongside another new SM fave, Frog.

Loving Frog

The guy who runs micro-label Audio Antihero lives just up the road from me here in South East London - our shared love of local cafe Fig & Pistachio, good strong coffee and "expensive toast" notwithstanding, he has also turned me onto New York duo Frog. A simple name for a complex animal - as is the case here. Audio Antihero is releasing their eponymous EP and Kind Of Blah LP on vinyl, and they are well worth picking up. Case in point - 'Icabod Crane', the opener from Frog. It's a heady, verbose earworm, with Dan Bateman's vocals tightroping between the manic twang of Isaac Brock and the weed-ridden whimsy of Wayne Coyne, and a glockenspiel chiming surreptitiously in the background as the strumming guitar devolves into a sonic unravelling. The whole mini-album is as breathtakingly manic and brilliant as this opening gambit, and while in my opinion Kind Of Blah seems a little more reined in, it is no less enthralling, especially in 'Fucking' and 'King Kong'. The more I listen to these guys, the more I am blown away - I realise this review doesn't do these releases anywhere near enough justice, so just buy the fucking things already. Frog are rumoured to be playing in London in January next year - stay posted!