Being Scottish, I would be tempted to claim that guitar pop was actually of Scottish origin. The truth, as always, is out there and it doesn’t drink Irn Bru, eat chips and cheese and worship the words of an Ayrshire drunk. The truth, you see, doesn’t even need to know five chords and, with relentless efficiency, London’s Witching Waves prove that very fact with their album “Crystal Café”.
Glorying in their very simplicity and eardrum blowing intent, Emma Ed and Mark revel in redistributing the post punk glories of the past in short sharp shocks – it seems trivial to refer to their sonic outbursts of angst as mere songs - with more than a sprinkling of axe wielding alienation simultaneously decorating their words.
Their raucous Anglicised lo-fi post punk is never better represented than by the near psychotic “Pitiless” but, just in case you were drawn to thinking of Witching Waves as one trick ponies, along comes the woozily hypnotic “Red Light Loop” to prove that, as Lou Reed might have said, there is always time for one more dirty needle.
Mainstream ears will doubtless be drawn to “Make It Up” but is “Receiver” that would cause me to kick the walls down and I have to say that, on the basis of this album, Witching Waves are in serious danger of being the band that replaces The Aquadolls as the soundtrack to my handbrake turns.
May the force be with them always.