Threatmantics – Upbeat Love – Album Review
Threatmantics are Heddwyn Davies, Ceri Mitchell and Huw Davies. They play their own brand of lo-fi rock using limited instrumentation – lead singer Heddwyn Davies plays viola, whilst Mitchell plays guitars and Huw Davies simultaneously takes charge of drumming and keyboard playing.
Evidently they are a bit different to other rock and roll three-pieces, and on Upbeat Love, their debut album, they make the most of their limitations to create great foot-stomping simple rock songs, such as the great tongue-in-cheek ‘Don’t Care’, in which Davies speaks the verse in Welsh, and then sings “I don’t know/what you just said/and I don’t care”.
Upbeat Love opens with the current single ‘Big Man’, the most traditional and most disappointing rock song on the album. It is only on Threatmantics’ second song that the viola kicks in, and some strange hybrid of thumping rock with barn-dance folk is evoked. I can well imagine drinking jugs of beer in a barn as Threatmantics play their nonchalant tunes to drunken peasants, though I’m yet to suggest this idea to their management. This song, ‘Buried Alive’, has a rough and raw edge to it, especially Heddwyn Davies’ lo-fi vocals, which always seems to be on the edge of some kind of breakdown, expressed by the break into the screeching instrumental chorus.
Threatmantics’ songs are almost all in swing time, which turns them into good forward-moving, fast-paced songs or lethargic musings, such as the fantastic ‘High Waister’. This, along with six minute ‘Get Outta Town’ are the most musically adventurous of any of the songs, given that they both contain well-worked breakdowns.
Upbeat Love ends with two sub-three minute songs: the fantastic romantic-cum-freakout track ‘Little Bird’ (the thrashed chorus is counterpointed by the sweet verses ‘Well little bird where have you been/the saddest thing that I’ve ever seen), and much more discontinuous ‘Lonely Heart’, which sounds like the swinging blues song Lambchop never wrote.
Threatmantics look as though they are going to be a great bluesy-rock band who are fun as well as good to listen to. After the slight disappointment of the single, Upbeat Love turns out to be very fine indeed. I equally imagine that they would be amazing fun to see live, and definitely recommend that you see them on their upcoming support tour with Clinic.
Live dates and example tracks can be found on their MySpace.
The album will be released by Double Six records.
1 comment so far
1 Taliesyn Kallstrom // Nov 4, 2008 at 8:37 pm
I can’t help but feel this review is simply cynical for the sake of being so, like flaws are trying to be fabricated in something so good. Besides, if this band had been seen live, then you’d have known that there the viola comes in in the first song on the album-it was just far too geniusly used for it to be identified.