By Sam Wise.
For us the highlight of Victorious Festival last summer was not, as predicted, The Pixies, on the promise of whom we had bought the tickets. No, the real stars of the event, for us, were Gosport punk/grunge duo Rats! Rats! Rats!, who we caught on one of the small stages, and were blown away by. This week they were drafted at the last minute to support French band We Hate You Please Die at Heartbreakers in Southampton, and we made no attempt to resist going, confident that whoever we could round up to attend would love them. We were, of course, right, and a pleasant chat with singer and guitarist Andy Hawxwell at the merch table alerted me to the upcoming release of their debut album, Bloody Hello on Friday 4th April. Andy was kind enough to give me early access to the album to review, ahead of their launch event at Edge of the Wedge in Portsmouth on Thursday 10th April.
Rats! Rats! Rats! are an easy to understand proposition; Andy plays a thundering Telecaster, Rich Oakes plays the drums, and they rip through tight sets of wry and memorable songs on the topics of Tennis, BMX bikes and Kia-Ora. There are no histrionics, no guitar solos, no forest of foot pedals, no pretence, just high energy, in your face songs which you will still remember in the morning. Hawxwell is a quintessential bloke about Gosport; t-shirt, baseball cap and goatie beard give away little if he’s offstage. Rich wanders the venue clad in a Keith Haring print sweatshirt, but on stage, it’s a muscle shirt with the face of Sid James emblazoned on it. In the confines of Heartbreakers, they produce an enveloping wall of sound which would be hard to recreate on record, and together with their intense, high octane presence, I am left wondering what the album can offer that compares.
I need not have been concerned; Bloody Hello delivers on all levels, pairing plenty of that onstage intensity with the opportunity to really take on board the lyrics. They have resisted the urge to interfere too much with the simplicity of their stage performance, the songs are spare and impactful on guitar and drums, with only the addition of occasional samples. Hawxwell’s guitar echoes the quiet/loud/quiet of 90s grunge, but the delivery is (nearly) all punk; shouty, direct, accented with the tones of the South of England’s working classes. What are their songs about? Well, class, for one thing, but not in a very overt way. Tennis describes interaction with the posh of the world through the medium of Sir Cliff’s favourite sport. Hawxwell describes his tennis opponents in mocking tones, without really explaining why he participates, ending with a poignant “tennis….where love means nothing”. The almost shoegazey Catch My Flow is somewhat opaque In its lyrical content until the end, when a spoken clip makes it clear that it describes a young woman dealing with her period when she had hoped to go on a date. Number 56 takes us through a list of reversed movie quotes; “I’m sorry Adrienne, but I DO NOT LOVE YOU”, “Where we’re going, we’re definitely gonna need roads!”. What is the point of you is an angry rant about a lover, or an ex lover; we’re never sure.
Should you check this album out? Sure. Definitely you should. But don’t take my word for it, get yourself along to Edge of the Wedge on Thursday the 10th, catch this wonderful band live. At the end, you will definitely want the album.
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