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Review: 'Post War Glamour Girls'
'Feeling Strange'   

-  Album: 'Feeling Strange' -  Label: 'Hide & Seek Records'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '30th October 2015'

Our Rating:
Post War Glamour Girls have never been a band to stay still. Their early singles and EP tracks had been deleted and disappeared from their live set long before the release of their debut album, ‘Pink Fur’ which appeared in February last year, and no sooner was the album out than they were performing and releasing new material. It’s this restlessness, and relentless creative impulse that makes them such an exciting band, and is surely one of the reasons they’ve built themselves a substantial cult following in a comparatively short time. Both live and on record, there’s something unpredictable, as well as menacing, that’s not so much just beneath the surface, but liable to break through at any moment. Of course, the other key to their success is their ability to knock out killer tunes.

Having already aired the album on-line in the past few weeks, many will already know what a cracking album it is. For those who don’t, ‘Feeling Strange’ has all the distinctive stylistic elements of their other work to date, not least of all the contrasting focal points of James Smith’s gruff vocals with the angelic tones of Alice Scott’s. However, at the same time, feels like a giant leap. If that sounds like a contradiction, it’s because the whole album is built on contradiction. It’s simultaneously poppier and more accessible, while also being darker, bleaker, heavier. If it’s stylistically more diverse, it’s lyrically more focussed, exploring in detail distancing, the breakdown of relationships and loss of direction.

Fizzing from the speakers, the jolting stop/start riff of ‘Felonious Punk’ signals a hitherto unseen forthrightness in execution, while lyrically, Smith’s fierce rant harks back on some levels to ‘Jazz Funerals’, and still packs in the kind of pithy lines he’s so good at: ‘If looks could kill / my headcount’s mounting’ he spits.

‘Wax Orphans’ and ‘Gentle is Her Touch’ incorporate the cinematic feel of I Like Trains, and the lugubriously reflective ‘Highest Hill’ finds Smith adopting a David Martin croon on the latter as the track’s reverb-drenched guitars drift into Disintegration-era Cure territory. ‘Shell of a Man’ is a perfectly realised piece of post-punk depressed pop, and the epic ‘Cannonball Villages’ is expansive, both musically and lyrically, as Smith explores his themes with a newfound emotional range.

The slower tracks are certainly more emphatically sad than anything on ‘Pink Fur’, but in contrast, the more uptempo songs are burlier, the hooks and choruses bigger, with the stomping ‘Southpaw Stance’ being an obvious standout.

If at times ‘Feeling Strange’ borders on the morose, the delivery is never less than engaging, and it’s hard not to feel yourself dragged toward dark corners where doubt lingers and wasted opportunities loiter.

Post War Glamour Girls have evolved, and the chances are, by the time they’ve done the promotional tour, they’ll have moved on again. They’re hungry, they’re angry, they’re even harder to categorise than ever, and they’re going from strength to strength.

Post War Glamour Girls Online
  author: Christopher Nosnibor

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Post War Glamour Girls - Feeling Strange