Involuntary posts by Tarwater #5
AC is proud to bring you another installment of involuntary posts by Tarwater, in which our accidental scribe addresses the new LP "Hidden" by These New Puritans. AC would like to give a shout out to DJ Slow for first pioneering the idea of disseminating Tarwater's funny, insightful commentary wholly without his consent.
"Most of the time, "English band receives mad critical love in England" = "enlarge your penis safely and naturally", as meaning and as news, but once in a while weird science makes a breakthrough I guess -- like with the 2nd record from These New Puritans. The first one was a quite good Fall/Wire/beats amalgam, but just-released Hidden is something else entirely. It's so singular in fact that in trying to describe it you(I) end up resorting to cumbersome critical portmanteaus like "if Liars listened to late-period Talk Talk and then found residence inside the PA at Brixton* basement party..." -- well, you still wouldn't really be there. What I can say: by song #2 you've heard a children's choir, a 13-piece woodwind orchestra and Japanese taiko drums**; the drums consequently, are HUGE - they sound like they wanna be scoring North Korean mass games; and in a interview before the record came out, the leader claimed he wanted something like "Steve Reich meets dancehall", paused, and then said "I've been writing a lot of music for the bassoon." Anyway.
*My London geography is practically non-existent - I'm taking this reference from the Clash and 80's British crime dramas (for all I know, Brixton could be Fort Greene by now) - so feel free to substitute any neighborhood where you'd hear a lot of dubstep/grime/dancehall.
Oh: subject heading is from The Fall's 'New Puritan': "I curse the self-copulation of your record collection."
