the only good thing the smiths ever did was not reform. when that day comes as far as i’m concerned my personal seventh seal is broken. not just because i have a pathological loathing for all things smithsian but also because i have a pathological distrust for band reformations. a peculiarly new phenomenon ( i think…) within the indie world. i’ll lazily lay the blame at all tomorrows parties circle-jerking feet. it continues apace with recent pavement and public image ltd reunion tours announced. all good bands split up. all bad bands eventually reform. that’s a ninety nine percent fact.
the one percent exception to this rule is mission of burma (and to a lesser extent dinosaur jr. coz the new stuff’s pretty ace and it does mean less time available for lou barlow to release dreary fucking indie pop solo albums). in essence what i expect, nay demand, is that you continue as you were, as a working band. write, release, tour etc. not to be some fucking nostalgia act, some slick karaoke kash kow, touring festivals, playing older fatter versions of your classics at gigs attended by thirty-something mid-mid-life-crisis twats trying to reclaim their youths from a mediocre stereophonicked adult life. paying yr forty quid gets you the pixies in some giant soulless corrugated warehouse playing a greatest hits set (ie doolittle and a handful of songs from other albums) and a desperate yawning void inside that says you’ve been so fucking had, here’s yr entirely unironic ‘ha ha we’ve reformed for the cash’ ironic t-shirt. is this different from bananarama or inxs without the dead guy? no. accept the fact your time has come and gone. yr just dying with a little less dignity, a little less of your scrawny black souls in tact, with yr trousers round your ankles like some fat balding indied version of the king…
anyway, bile spewed, rant over. back to the main event folks.
mission of burma’s third album proper since the regrouping. it’s slightly unsettling to think that signals calls and marches and vs. are twenty seven years old. but they are. and the sound the speed the light comes on like it’s nineteen eighty two all over again. with maybe even a nod to this on ssl83?
it’s the spikiest spunkiest record of the three newbies. fairly unrelenting in it’s boisterous pace and with that rather tasty mix of brains and brawn, noise and melody, that made me fall in love with the buggers’ music all those years ago. it is, reduced, a straight forward (punk?)rock record. relatively speaking. you can still see the minutemen-style we jam econo in them. not so much in the music but certainly in the attitude, the aural politics the sheer bloody belligerent verve and nerve of them.
opening with the wordily humorous – one, don’t look at anyone / two, drink only when drunken to – decidedly tuneful and frankly singalongable power pop of 1,2,3 partyy! is a bold move. kindof reminded of the newer buzzcocks albums on this one. the video’s below.
and from there on in it’s the usual mix of miller, conley and prescott’s differential aesthetic poise. and it’s this meshing of the divergent styles that makes mission of burma so fucking great. whether it’s peter prescott’s percussive intensity and more overtly confrontational writing as heard on good cheer with it’s occasional link wray distorto twang and shouty thumping rockerry. or clint conley’s brash melodic bombast (who oddly also provides the record only slowish moment with feed). or roger millers more intricate numbers, dense and tense and wiry textured, building like the feast of angled geetar scratch (plus a fuzzy delight of a solo) and ferocious drum rattle and thud that is possession.
everything on here stands up to the ballad of johnny burma or that’s how i escaped my certain fate. an indication, i think, of how good this shit is. so treasure them while they’re still at it because prescott stated last year that they only had a few more years left in them. as burma anyway.mission of burma / matador
