A most righteous collection of garage rock bands have been coursing through the veins of Manchester’s bars and basement venues for a good couple of years now – as expertly evidenced on Only Joking Records’ Manchester Standards compilation last year (read our review here). The standard has just been raised again, though, by acid-brained punk trio MiSTOA POLTSA and their brilliantly grotty, deranged EP, You Could Tell It Was Alive When It Died – out today on limited cassette and digital download. We have an exclusive stream of the full EP below, as well as a video, above, for its lead-off track ‘TLD’. It features a toilet seat guitar. Get hold of the EP here.
Recorded with John Tatlock in the echoey old ballroom of Antwerp Mansion – just off Rusholme in South Manchester’s infamous Curry Mile – and released by the recently ascendant PINS, through their own Haus Of Pins label, You Could Tell It Was Alive When It Died sounds like a bunch of chewed-up Cramps’ hooks, mangled and spat back out at speed. The trio, originally a solo project for frontman Mark Javin, now aided and abetted by Sion and Robin Edwards, give the sense of only just about managing to cling onto their interlocking parts as they canon discordantly against each other at force – the thrill coming in waiting to hear if they fall off. The whole thing doesn’t hang about either, lurching in and hurtling off in four tracks and just over ten sense-scrambling minutes. Catch the band live at The Bell Jar in Sheffield on March 27, The Continental in Preston on March 28 and Gullivers in Manchester on April 8.
