Some things just aren’t meant to go together: Marmite and fish, lager and Baileys, celery and anything and hardcore and good ol’ fashioned rock ‘n’ roll. Unless of course you’re either Heston Blumenthal – to whom the laws of taste are seemingly meaningless – or Exeter four piece The Computers.
Granted, Rock ‘n’ roll-tinged-hardcore-punk sounds infinitely preferable to haddock in a marmite sauce served on a bed of celery and baby’s tears, but it takes a certain amount of confidence to attempt to pull of either without it being, well, shit. While I have no clue as to the culinary prowess of The Computers, on the strength of You Can’t Hide From The Computers they certainly pull of their self-professed mission to sound like “Elvis Costello & The Attractions and Black Flag with some Rocket From The Crypt chucked in” with aplomb.
‘Teenage Tourettes Camp’ gets things of to a great start, sounding like someone stuffed a nail bomb up Chuck Berry’s arse and for good measure throws in a harmonica interlude that could have been pilfered from A Hard Days Night era Beatles. This sets the tone for the following six .
Musically, The Computers are tighter than the u-bend of the toilet in a submarine that’s just been buried in an undersea avalanche. So snappy is this, ‘Love The Music, Hate The Kids’ and standout ‘Please Drink Responsibly’ come and go almost before you realise, necessitating repeat listens.
Unfortunately, for all that they do well at times The Computers seem incapable of writing a chorus, and resort to even less decipherable screeching, or a D-beat-esque plod. Closer ‘City Ghosts’ serves as a nice change of pace, with a not too subtle tip of the cap to Kyuss, but the chorus is indistinguishable from that of previous track ‘S.O.S’, so much so that I really did resort to playing the two back to back in an attempt to spot the difference.
Yet at just shy of 20 minutes you’re hardly going to be looking for a record that gives substantial returns, and You Can’t Hide From The Computers is by and large worth more than the occasional repeated listen.
