TT&T & T BOOM BOOM
Teaspoonriverneck - Do it again Available from: for £7 from Kendall Guitars and for download at teaspoonriverneck. bandcamp.com
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ince I first picked up a copy of Teaspoonriverneck’s second full length album at their album launch show at the De La Rue back in May, it has been regularly spun (or the iPod equivalent) often several times a week – which is no mean feat given the amount of new music I try and get through. On this record, their fifth release in total including EPs and their selftitled debut, the now four piece band seem to have settled on a sound that combines elements of all their previous work. Teaspoonriverneck seemed to start out a band heavily influenced by the grunge and desert rock scenes that produced the likes of Kyuss and Queens Of The Stone Age along with the groove-ridden stoner sound of Monster Magnet and their ilk. From there they developed into, variously, tracks bordering on hardcore (Breadline on Craft of Lisia) through to early Black Sabbath inspired heaviness (Gideon and the Black Jaws and Crow In The Road) and eccentric almost indie groove (notably on the Sunset’s Trip EP). Do It Again pulls all these different styles together in a new and cohesive way, which has clearly been influenced by the band’s lineup change since their last release ‘IV’, with Ian Allsopp joining on bass and John Sealey taking on keyboard duties. This has added a sense of psych and brought back some of the grunge to their sound, but added to this is a certain amount of glam too, albeit not the sort that produced the likes of Mötley Crue and their many bastard offspring in the late 1980s. Looking at the album as a whole, BECAUSE QUALITY MATTERS
have constantly proved themselves to be an ever-evolving beast and, while they stick within the stoner-grooverock ‘n’ roll area, keep reinventing it and here they have once again reinvented it in fine style. it also seems to have adopted a loose concept quality to it, whether intentional or not, with the main bulk of the record bookended by the tracks ‘Saturday’ and ‘Sunday’. Now, I may be reading too much into this, but, it seems to me, this could easily be a ( highly figurative) tale of a weekend out with even opener ‘Curtains’ hinting that this is a collective tale in a b-movie filmic kind of way. Across the record my highlights come in varied form, ‘Superzero’ really kicks things off proper with a swirling psych-infused heavy groove sound which seems designed to produce both slow nods and gyrating hips all at once, while ‘Beewulf ’ and ‘Love Smudge’ provide a double hit of the heavy and speedy sounds the band have made previously and ‘Sunday’ provides an excellent comedown to complete the set. While this may sound like I am saying this is all Teaspoonriverneck going over old ground, that couldn’t be further from the truth as with Do It Again the band seem to have taken all their old ideas to create something genuinely new, and this is one of the reasons I hold them in such high regard among bands - not only in Guernsey, but in general. While many bands seem content to do the same thing over and over again (and if you’re Mötörhead or AC/DC, there’s nothing wrong with that) “the Spoons”
‘Do It Again’ is certainly an album worth checking out, now I just wish it was on vinyl; it seems it would feel right on a record player rather than an iPod.
Tom’s rating
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