There’s a scene in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels that captures the moment of impending fear. Trapped into a Faustian pact with his psychotic card playing opponent to raise the cash necessary to continue the game, Eddy discovers to his horror that he’s almost half a million pounds in debt to a man for whom removing digits is a Sunday afternoon hobby. To the strains of The Stooges’ I Wanna Be Your Dog, the room begins to spin. This is genuine danger.
The Spinning Rooms’ debut album isn’t the grisly event described above, but it’s almost as mesmerising. On 101001 there’s a sense of foreboding, the brief interlude between hedonistic pleasure and irretrievable catastrophe. Good God is John Coltrane and Ron Asheton freaked out on acid at 5am at Pony, lost in the neverworld of cognitive confusion; Reverting to Type is The Pixies lost in the desolate cultural plains of Australian suburbia, wallowing in the shallow depths of suburban awareness; Caught in a Brawl is lost out on the Krautrock prairie where angels fear to tread, and even your average fool is running scared.
The trance-like rhythms of Know No Secrets draw you in like Primal Scream taking a trip back through Charlie Manson’s psychotic fantasy world. This could get ugly, if only you can remember your name. A Cask In the Park – we’ve all been there, even if we’re too old to admit it – stumbles through the dark in search of redemption. Don’t Stop Me paints a picture of a man – it’s always a man – wrestling his inner demons in a vain attempt to find salvation. Buddy is the nadir of The Stooges’ fucked-up journey, where normality is the object of anger, and community some hippie bullshit that’s chewed up and spat out in the closest spittoon. Fire is reserved, the notionally quiet kid who seems OK, but you never really know; Cheap locks into a beat that could take you to a jazzed-up world of spiritual beauty, but only if you’re up to the challenge. And if you are tough enough, The Spinning Rooms have got it all. This could well be the most significant album of this year. And the freakiest.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Good God
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: The Stooges THE STOOGES, Mercy DEAF WISH
In A Word: Abrasive
