The Higher State – Volume 27

Folksiness, Farfisa and fuzz guitar on fifth LP from Kent's garage stalwarts!

The Higher State's fifth long-player is on store shelves now (or more accurately available to order online) and does not dissappoint. Ten years into their tenure the band is now distilled to a three-piece; Marty Ratcliffe on guitar/vocals/organ, Paul Messis on bass/guitar and Scarlett Rickard on drums. With the writing split between Ratcliffe and Messis.

The touchstones of The Byrds, Love and The Electric Prunes are here to satisfy the faithful, but despite their love of US garage the band have a distinctly (English) personality of their own. To call Volume 27 a protest album may be a step too far but there is a state-of-the-nation thread that runs though the record.

Musically there's folksiness, Farfisa and fuzz guitar, with production values geared towards treble-friendly AM radio. The ear-splitting guitar solos and frantic drumming are balanced by the gentler folk-rock type tracks which helps hold it together as an album. (Unlike a lot of garage LPs which all too often sound like a cobbled together collection of A and B-sides)

For a musical form that was supposedly crystalised and archived on Lenny Kaye's Nuggets compilation it comes across here as in pretty good shape and the perfect tool to kick against thepricks of today.

To paraphrase The Who - “Garage rock is dead they say. Long live garage rock!”

Click here for The Higher State on Facebook. 

Click here for 13 O'clock Records.

The Shook-Ups! - Bad Reception

Snotty, fuzzed up garage punk from the North West.

It's odd to think that a musical genre that was so short lived and financially unrewarding for many its originators continues to be the template of choice for so many current bands. I'm talking of garage punk, and those '60s US bands that formed in that short period after the decline of the beat era, but before psych became flower power. Those bands whose forgotten, poor selling singles were collected up and reissued the following decade, most successfully on Elektra Records' Nuggets series.

It's that style of music that's made by The Shook-Ups! who hail not from the American mid-west, but from Wigan, a town more famous for its pier, its association with northern soul, The Verve, and er well... pies. That could all change though with the release of Bad Reception, The Shook-Ups! debut album. It's garage punk played and sung exactly as it should be. With plenty of fuzz guitar played through Selmer or Vox amps, and simple lines on a Farfisa organ, it's anti-intellectual, defiantly non-progressive, yet packed with hook-laden songs from start to finish. Any solos are short, sharp and serve the songs.

The subject matter sticks mainly with the small-time psychodrama of girl trouble and dissatisfaction, with lyrics more sneered than sung, yet the songs are so catchy and infectious it makes it seem that such a mindset could almost be fun. And it is, at least while the album is playing. Fans of the Nuggets compilations, The Sonics, The Seeds, or in fact any music that doesn't take itself too seriously will get a kick out of this album. 

Click here for The Shook-Ups! website.