Filthy one-night stands, defiling the senses and East End high jinx, Singled Out!

Artlessly fascinating, and frontrunners of the current scum-rock movement The Kills blow a huge cloud of smoke in our faces in the form of their first single ‘Fried My Little Brains’. It struts and stomps, and writhes in its own blues appeal. Like a much sexier Beefheart, or the Velvet Underground smoking crack, it’s the kind of song you’d expect Jack and Meg White to get down to do the dirty to. But this isn’t just the soundtrack of a filthy one-night stand. B-sides and tracks off forthcoming album ‘Keep On Your Mean Side’, such as ‘Cat Claw’ bolster VV and Hotel’s smouldering scuz-art intrigue. Zealous, stark, innate, miss this at your peril.

Starting with a New York take on the tune from the Phantom of the Opera, ‘Stay Away From Me’ is the second single from four piece The Star Spangles.  Vocalist Tommy Volume gasps and grates over spiralling guitar in this rebellious yet raw love ditty. All Ramones style shout-along choruses with the buoyant dynamism of the Buzzcocks, ‘Stay Away From Me’ is perhaps how the Clash would tell their current beau to **** off, while winning the offending female back in the process.

Next, the malevolent force propelling the 80’s dance rock revival, The Faint, and the first single to be taken from the furtively inspired ‘Danse Macabre’.  ‘Agenda Suicide’ begins like the start of Stephen King phobia instiller ‘It’, before launching into a deliberate adulteration and defilement of the senses. Todd Baechle's Duran Duran-esque and disquieting vocal, lazes over the horror show melody, before morphing into a harrowing grating snarl. Morose and reckless, yet almost military in its perfection, The Faint are coming, and stalking your sanity. Succumb, because we all float down here Georgie, and soon you’ll float too...

What started out as an exercise in learning to use pro-tools, ended up as punk super band The Transplants, featuring the talents of Blink 182’s Travis Barker, and Rancid’s Tim Armstrong. Categorically the most remarkable thing to be released on Epitaph in an age, ‘Diamonds And Guns’ opens with jangly jazz-punk piano, so far from the shit and piss antics of Blink 182, that the obvious associations are more than undeserving. Cleverly layered sample punk, and a sure-fire hit with the old Offspring fans, its good to see something new evolving in the trite punk scene. Pity that the song has fallen to the same misfortune as Hot Hot Heat’s ‘Bandages’, i.e. being taken off the Radio 1 play list for the fact its got ‘gun’ in the title, or it's Saddam’s favourite song or something.

Hope Of The States just might be the disconsolate hope of the UK, with their debut single ‘Black Dollar Bills’. Poignant, and emotive, the bands shimmering epic, rouses feeling in a “we shall not be moved kind of way” “I’ve seen broken people smiling/ you can’t buy us with your dollar bills,” swears vocalist Sam Herlihy, and you believe him too. Down to earth, yet otherworldly at the same time, the blend of gentle piano and sanguine guitar with the bread and butter lyrics make Hope of The States the Radiohead for the less ostentatious, and their gig tickets wont cost £30 neither.

“Unlike other bands who claim to have come from the East End of London, The Cognition are the real deal” reads the press release. Shit, thank god we’ve cleared that one up, what with the music world fraught with pretenders to the East End throne right now. The cockney four piece, with the ID to prove their birth place return to the music world with double A-side ‘So Different’ and ‘Bamboo Section’, a release so caught up in Oasis post Shoulders of Giants, its enough to make you ask The Cognition to once again reach for their passports (Are you sure you’re not from Manchester mate?). Blithe and generally genial, The Cognition have produced songs that while perfect in production, and that are agreeable enough, remain lacklustre, dreary and make you regret not listening to The Kills for the last five minutes instead.

Philadelphia three-piece Burning Brides, another of the many bands standing in the ever expanding, and seemingly limitless court of The Stooges, return with their second single ‘Plank Of Fire’. Rowdy and rawkus rock ‘n’ roll, masturbation, riotous crashing guitars, unruly and disobedient misspent youth… roll out the adjectives. It’s good, but it’s all been done before. Undeniably, so has the whole of the retro rock revival, but this was done last week, by about twenty other bands, namely Queens of the Stone Age. 

As Linkin Park will find, the time for nu-metal has passed. Though kids who can’t afford to buy a military jacket still cling on to their hoodies for dear life, praying that the golden days of Papa Roach will return, the scene died faster than Britney and Durst's relationship, and has been replaced alongside other passé genre Emo, with ‘post hardcore’. <209>, also claiming to come from the East End of London, (be wary though, The Cognition have warned you about this sort of thing) release ‘Take Me I’m Yours’ a few years too late, and with a press release seemingly written by David Brent from ‘The Office’ at his most cringe inducing moments. (Audio the vocalist is so brash, “he can offend the blind, deaf, dumb, and dead”) Even if hell freezes over and the nu-metal/ hip hop fusion is given another chance, <209> really aren’t going anywhere, except to catch the number 209 bus back to Walthamstow.