Dub Thompson - 9 Songs

The music of 9 Songs is firmly rooted in the scuzzier, rowdier side of post-punk that folks as disparate as those mentioned above have peddled at some point or another. Album opener “Hayward!” (is that a shout-out to The Horrors or This Heat? Either is likely but the latter is more fitting) is a clattering, caustic number built around industrial (little i) sounding guitars that scrape and squeal on top of the thundering, tightly wound rhythm. They follow that up with No Time, which lives up to their name: “No Time”’s a dubby cut, all echo and spaced-out plod. I can’t lie, I had to Google the title of the next track, “Epicondyles.” The results were less interesting than the initial mystery, so it’s better to just imagine what it means, folks. The track has an abrasive, on-a-knife-edge sound built around a rising rhythm and a sharp guitar jangle.

That the album was produced by Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado (in his house!) is worth noting – the sparseness and jagged edges of Dub Thompson music hasn’t been dulled by Rado’s psychedelic sensibilities. The off-kilter, tribal rhythm of “Dograces” equally recalls Beastie Boys and The Fall – it’s easy to imagine Mark E. Smith or New York’s finest spitting over the track, until it completely shifts near the three-minute mark and becomes something else entirely: The closing segment of “Dograces” shows the humour that Max and Evan have brought to their project. It’s a silly little piece of muzak that completely shakes up the album by adding a little surreal bent. Whatever their intention was for putting that at the close of the track, it works.

“Mono” comes on like a robot-disco - all shuddering, stop-start rhythms and a wild guitar howling away as if it was a malfunctioning machine. It sounds more in common with early Fall than, say, Queens of the Stone Age, who themselves are adept at making tunes I’ve described as “roboty”. It’s always a surprise when the title track turns out to be an instrumental, isn’t it? The track “9 Songs” has a rock-solid post-punk swing to it, the bass and drums are locked down tight and the guitar feedback is some of the harshest on the record.

My favourite track on here is Iggy and the Stooges-indebted stomper “Pterodactyls” – it’s a relentless, thrilling ride through a blistering wall of fuzz. The track has the throat-grabbing, shit-kicking intensity that a lot of the previous tracks don’t, and is all the better for it. To put the most aggressive, most involving track last takes some stones, but it works here. Primacy and recency and all that…

This is a really surprising record, and one that you really have to spend time with to let it fully hit ya. It took me getting locked out of the Soundcloud press-page (too many listens) to realise that I’d better just wait for the record to hit the shelves before letting Max and Evan hit me all over again. 9 Songs is a great record, it’s just lacking a couple of showcase moments of the “Spectre vs Rector”, “Not Waving”, “Dirt” variety to push it firmly into the ‘dim and pokey’ territory. They just seem to be having too much fun making all this noise. ​