Avalanche Party – Shake The Slack
Nothing is more unpredictable than a large congregation of people brought together by pleasure. A dance floor can quickly turn into a riot, and a protest easily shifts into a revolution. People who know this and who’ve learned to control this usually end up working in politics in some advisory capacity. Of course, this is what often sways the fate of a nation one way or another.
But you gotta have music. It’s always been that way. You could only rely on drummers and horn players looking to move the people in the mob to a certain frequency. Modern sounds, especially of the post-punk variety, are designed specifically to accompany these kinds of events. But there are plenty advertising their services. How can a band stick out?
Avalanche Party do manage to stand out from the myriad of post-punk bands angrily playing dance music by doing two clever things. On “Shake The Slack,” the singer sounds more dangerous and demented than the majority of his counterparts. And the band genuinely sounds like they’ve acquired the ability to make audiences dance. This kind of combo can be dangerous. It’s hard to know how many clubs and village discos will want to have Avalanche Party over. But the incoming protests, demonstrations and revolutions could well do with a group that exhibits these kinds of qualities.
Bethlehem Casuals – Tongues
History isn’t necessarily written by the winners, as has been so often said, but by those who bothered writing it and keeping the parchments safe. Who cares what really happened? Who’s going to bother to actually investigate?
The most important characters in human history were only written about, at the very best, hundreds of years after they lived. Can we truly accept the texts as facts? Should we really believe the writers praising or criticizing the people whom they never got to meet?
Starting bands is not much different from starting a giant battle. You need to form alliances and learn when to break them. You need to take advantage of the vulnerabilities of your opponents. And you’re lucky if you get out of them alive.
Bethlehem Casuals’s “Tongues” is a break-up song – the story of band members leaving or being forced to leave a band. It doesn’t describe the events exactly, doesn’t rely on recriminations, but uses that potent negative energy to create a tense, danceable post-punk song. “Tongues” is a celebration of being the last person standing and of having the luxury of holding the pen in your hand when the final words get written down.
