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4.0 out of 5 stars
Killer, guitar-driven neo-post-punk, June 18, 2008
This review is from: Free Electricity (Audio CD)
In the past few years, we've seen a lot of music inspired by, derived from, or simply baldly aping British 1980's post-punk. These bands can be identified simply by the presence of the adjective "angular," which is rock-crit shorthand for the jagged guitar attack they all seem to share, clipped electric bursts over a precise rhythm section. Some do it gleefully -- I particularly liked Franz Ferdinand's first album, and The Young Knives' most recent album (Superabundance) -- and some do it stultifyingly, trapped in a copy of a thirty-year old groove with no room to move.
The Cops do it well. They're somewhere in between classic punk and post-punk -- they're probably a bit more rhythmic than orthodox punk, and a hell of a lot more violent than most post-punk. They sound older than their years. They're from the Pacific Northwest, a longtime bastion of rock and roll, and their latest album rocks, by turns sinister, sneering, knowing, and angry. It's a great guitar record, sharp as a tack, with no sugary concessions, no synths in sight, and no letup. Fun as hell.
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