EP Review: Blackwaters - 'People Street'
Britains finest advert to study music at uni just get better and better
Let's make it clear now- going to uni isn't cool. You gain weight, lose your mind, spunk your money, make regrettable sexual decisions and ultimately leave yourself in crushing debt for the majority of your working days. Pointless right? Studying music at uni gathers even more of an unpleasant stereotype- upper class, pretentious theoretical bastards who have no interest in the actual meaning behind the music, just interested in having people stare at them, making a quick buck or getting laid. And music students are dicks as well. I know that for a fact because I (and the band I'm in) used to be one and are currently paying the price. However, if you're gonna sound like BlackWaters (who studied at fucking ACM, how are these guys not pretentious jazz cunts?) study music. Go into debt. Fuck up your life. Because if you sound this good, a hellish existence is fucking worth it.
BlackWaters aren't about reinventing the wheel. Just throwing it down the hill, faster and crazier than its been done before. The title track to this EP is slower than what we're used to from them, but contains the same kind of venom as early Clash records to make it interesting (with an added crazy fairground, psychedelic ska breakdown which can only be experienced) and ends up being their first real arms aloft style anthem. EP closer Suzie Q is potentially their finest work, combining British humour and acute but subtle social commentary with biting post punk rage. Help Me is QOTSA if Josh Homme knew what a real person did in their life. The single Push Me Up and I Got It Wrong is BlackWaters by numbers but that is by no mean a bad thing. What BlackWaters do so well is they wrap the inevitability of modern life in riffs and energy that are frankly impossible to ignore. That energy and creativity breaths new life into tired subjects thrown around by British bands for decades. But this band really stay on top of their contemporaries with an incomparable youthful energy. Play this EP loud. Oh, and go and see them live. No matter how good you think this EP might be, you have no idea what you've let yourself in for until you see them live. So go. Now.
Words by James Kitchen