Sunday 12 January 2014

Menace Beach - Fortune Teller

Single review by soul1@thesoundofconfusion.com


It's Zeitgeist overload time! Tomorrow will see the release of the 'Lowtaker' EP by Leeds duo Menace Beach and it comes with the Memphis Industries stamp of approval, and that's rarely a bad sign. True to form, single 'Fortune Teller' is a corker, and one that has obviously been rifling through our record collection of recent music and decided to incorporate everything we love into one handy, bite-sized package. Distorted guitars? There are plenty of those here, and it has a slightly lo-fi thing going on. You can detect the scent of shoegaze drifting though the air too, as well as some sounds that fit in well with the psych scene that's gradually taking over the alternative world.

That might sound a bit try-hard, a bit like Menace Beach have seen what's becoming popular amongst fans of outsider guitar music, but if it is then it certainly doesn't feel that way, not one bit. Rather than some 'Scrapheap Challenge' style cobbling together of old discarded parts to attempt to create a working model, with perhaps a 50/50 success rate, 'Fortune Teller' is box-fresh. It's the warped organ sounds that hit first, closely followed by the low buzz of guitar and the slacker vibes hidden in the vocals. This is a song that, despite filling in a lot of criteria to be "now", manages to do so without robbing any other band's off-cuts at all; it's as good as what everyone else is doing, plus it combines these different components in an individual way. A thoroughly decent tune.




Menace Beach's website

Buy the EP

Catch them live:

Jan 14 The Social, London, United Kingdom  
Jan 24 Brudenell, Leeds, United Kingdom Tickets
Feb 06 Our Black Heart, London, United Kingdom





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