The Sticks – The Sticks « New music, features, reviews, news and free mp3s

FEATURES

ALBUMS

LIVE

“We get along really well, we don’t argue or get drunk and call each other bastards.”

ALBUM REVIEWS

Captain Ahab

End of Irony

(Deathbomb Arc)

Since Mika Miko split and No Age started touring the world, LA’s The Smell scene has been searching for a new, less garage-y sound, and its found it in ravesploitation.

Kele

The Boxer

(Wichita/Polydor)

READ

Tokyo Police Club

Champ

(Memphis Industries)

READ

LIVE REVIEWS

Liars

Shepherd's Bush Empire , London

Liars have always been proponents of the idea of more – more bass, more fuzz, more weirdness.

Album Review

The Sticks

[Upset The Rhythm]

8/10

For all the ten-minute drone fests one might know and love, there’s nothing quite like a track that cuts the crap and gets its business done in a minute thirty. The Sticks crash out this crude beauty in less than forty minutes and leave you slightly dazed but twenty songs happier – have that, you proggy three-hour five-trackers. Boisterous and a bit boozy, this is an album of cymbal-driven, crunchy garage punk, prickling with reverb-drenched vocals, manic, metallic surf guitars and a distinct lack of bass lines. There is the occasional woozy punk waltz (‘In The Sea’) or bass-heavy psych moment (‘Nothing Song’) but for the most part this is a thrashy, abrupt, clattering record – if violently emptying a cutlery drawer was an art form, it would sound like The Sticks. That’s a compliment.

By Polly Rappaport