It’s fair to say that when The locomotive sound Corporation arrived on my desk without so much as a hint as to its contents, it was hard to know what to expect although the cover hinted at a post rock element. That turned out to be somewhat erroneous (I know – never judge a CD by its cover…) and despite hailing from Paris, TLSC aim for the strange wasteland that sists between early P J Harvey, The Kills and Sonic Youth with drawled vocals yearning for New York, skeletal guitar recalling all manner of lo-fi American indie bands (Sebadoh, Pavement et al) and clattering percussion veering between unwieldy synth lines and earth-shattering live drums depending on the needs of the song.
The result is a surprisingly contemporary, yet tied-to-the-old-school sound that looks both forward and back and recaptures a rock ‘n’ roll attitude that seemed somehow lost for a time. ‘Last train’ opens this brief, five-track EP and it’s a strange beast. Stripped bare to spidery guitar riffs and dodgy synth percussion for the most part, when the chorus kicks in with its crazed crash-cymbal abuse it’s like the floodgates have opened and when the dizzyingly heavy bridge sees at least another ten guitars added to the mix it simply sounds cool, rather than over-egged. ‘Rounded circle’ applies a similar trick, with a lurching synth backdrop that sounds like it was created on trashed equipment left over from the ‘pretty hate machine’ sessions, reverb-laden guitar a-la James Bond and a sneer-topped groove that presumably sounds distressingly immense in the live environment. It all sounds deceptively simple, yet there’s a huge amount going on in these songs and with a feed-back laden solo that will put smiles on the faces of Sonic Youth fans it offers all that you could possibly want from a swampy, garage-rock band. It’s a great song that stays in the mind long after the disc has finished spinning and, like crack, you’ll be wanting your next fix pretty damn soon.
‘Poison’ is the dark heart and highlight of the album – coiled and waiting in the shadows, it doesn’t strike straight away, the band preferring to bide the time and as the riff slithers out of the speakers it’s hard not to feel just the slightest twinge of nervousness. A shaking, brittle, feed-back fuelled monster it never truly unleashes its power, and the more the band restrain themselves the greater the sense of anticipation – it recalls the startling, primitive attack of Sonic youth’s ‘freezer burn’ cross bred with Iggy Pop and the Jesus and Mary Chain and it never truly explodes, ending leaving you without the much needed release that the song promised. ‘Turn into rage’ slows things down still further but with bursts of drums and guitar skittering across the surface the overall impression is of Fugazi’s lurching punk attack and when the guitars do kick off, veering between a sonic maelstrom of sound and a distorted groove of monumental proportions it’s like being trapped in a battle of the bands between QOTSA and the Sonic Youth and you start to wonder exactly when it was when you last heard any band making music like this. It’s arty, bold and exciting and as the song reaches its speaker-wrecking climax you start to fear for both your sanity and your audio equipment. ‘King Kong’ returns to less harassing pastures, once again picking up the slack between Kills, early Yeah yeah Yeahs and PJ Harvey and it’s a hypnotic, memorable tune that the band close on.
Despite its brevity, the locomotive sound corporation have managed to cram a ridiculous amount of ideas into five brief songs and the overriding feeling that the album conjures is an admiration for the way that the band have taken the inspirational, oft-forgotten sounds of 90s alt-rock and dragged them kicking and screaming into a whole new decade whilst simultaneously making them sound fresh and re-invigorated. Inventive, heavy and exciting, the songs are memorable and I hope to hear a LOT more of this band. Right, I’m off to listen to the EP again…
