"Like a more humane Fall or less bluesy White Stripes" was Ben Thompson's smartass assessment of Prinzhorn Dance School's eponymous 16-song debut from 2007.
From liberating monsters in the head to finding a spaceman in the garden, Tobin Prinz (guitar, voice) and Suzi Horn (bass,voice, drums) stomped and ranted to transcend the boredom of their otherwise humdrum, treadmill lives.
"We like to work on our own", they stubbornly declared on their presentation video and they are clearly a couple who, first and foremost, work to please themselves. This independent spirit means that their music is an expression of their own frustrations rather than being a set of second-hand gripes.
Home Economics, the Brighton-based duo's third release, ploughs much the same furrow although the songs on this six track EP are slightly more restrained and contrived than the earlier material.
Battlefield, for instance, is partly inspired by a surreal after hours encounter with an urban fox on a drunken walk home and features the somewhat pretentious reflection: "look at me predator, our lives are entwined".
Although there isn't quite the same urgency and rage which made their debut album so exciting, the duo still place a high value on spontaneity. The tunes were played and recorded while moving between different flats and they often used the first take. This process prompts Prinz to comment "these songs are almost like field recordings”.
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You can hear this in the directness (and barely contained venom) of Education with its battle cry of "teach me to feel real".
The desire for authenticity also figures on the closing track Let Me Go, a portrait of a man trapped in a relationship "that won't rewind or be deleted". "I don't know what's real and what's for show" Prinz reflects gloomily.
Prinz and Horn were apparently fired up after their first US shows in 2013
and this is a record which suggests a desire to break away from minimalist miserabilism towards a more expansive, even optimistic, sound.
Still, if this is the couple being shiny happy people, I'd hate to catch them on a bad day.
Prinzhorn Dance School's website
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