So you have this Canadian band called The Famines. There's a buzz about them so you get their album "The Complete Collected Singles" just so you can say you have got it. So that you can say that your finger is on the pulse. Only The Famines are about the least trendy band – or duo to be technically accurate – you are likely to encounter.
For one thing they're positively visceral. You wouldn't be expecting a hi-fi experience from a band like this, and you don't get one, but the sheer brutality that drives these short, sharp songs along is a wonder to behold. The Famines sound like they are going to break. I don't mean break something either. They are going to break themselves into little pieces.
Now, bands that make a loud noise aren't new. They are part and parcel of the rock 'n' roll experience and have been since God invented the electric guitar. Consequently "Faux Famous" and "Princess Louise Caroline Alberta" smash the room up in the best MC5 fashion and that works just fine for me. However, there is more and, perhaps surprisingly, this band go deep with "Free Love Is A Sales Technique" pulling them in a postmodern post punk direction while "The First World War" soars way above the head of the average beer swiller. Yes, it's an actual protest song. The Famines do protest songs for a generation that don't know what protest is. That's got to be maximum volume irony.
If The Famines ever make it big – after all talent doesn't get you anywhere these days – then I guarantee that at least three million people will claim to have seen them when they were playing the bars and clubs of Canada.
Available for download and on vinyl from Mammoth Cave Recordings.