Daily Life, Blah.

Spectres Cold War 7"

I've been hearing a thing or two about this band for a while, and being that I'll pick up anything on Whispers in Darkness, I added this 7" to a recent mail order. Being the impatient product of instant gratification that I am, I peeked ahead on a certain "place for friends" and was not impressed. It just sounded dull, redundant and overly referential of something that hasn't aged well. I was preparing a whole argument about how it's fine to emulate certain aspects of "classics", but how lyrics about the Cold War is just a grasp at the legitimacy achieved by those bands. If it's been close to 30 years since it's been "20 odd years now waiting for a flash", we can stop writing songs about it. Or maybe write a song about how you can draw a clear line from the start of the Cold War to the 9-11 attacks. So yesterday the package arrives and after spinning D-Clone(kills) I put this thing on and get ready to tear it apart. Whoops, as I read along with the lyrics to "Cold War" I find that it's not about the Cold War, but (unless I'm dead wrong) rather a pretty intelligent dissertation about how leftist types deify the members of a repressive, violent regime(Bolsheviks). Some of the lyrics are needlessly silly ("a single black bird flies though the sky"), but not enough that it ruins it. The music sounds much better on vinyl. A few people have criticized the vocals, since most bands of this style have British accents. While I agree that it would probably would sound better with the accent, I'm glad they don't fake one. This is a much better record than I anticipated after my preview. It's not super exciting or anything , but it's far from the turd I was expecting.