LA'S THE BLOOD ARM have garnered some impressive notices since their inception in February 2002. In May 2004, they were nominated as best New Artists at the LA Weekly Music Awards, were personally invited to open for Franz Ferdinand at their Stateside dates last June and then returned to LA to play to capacity crowds for a whole month at the influential Spaceland venue.
Not bad for a band with only one Stateside-only album release, but on hearing their second single proper "Say Yes" it's not hard to see why they can lay claim to such stellar success from a position of relative obscurity.
Because "Say Yes" is excellent. It finds Dyan Valdes's descending piano riff taking the place of a bassline, spurs guitarist Zebastian Carlisle to use his guitar as a blunt instrument rather than a traditional melodic instrument and the whole caboodle assembling itself as an urgent, garage-y thing mainlining on energy and intrigue. It doesn't prompt obvious comparions, either, which is usually a good thing in the long run.
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The two additional tracks are anything but makeweights, either. First single "Do I Have Your Attention?" reappears in demo form, but even at this stage it's a spikily impressive burlesque, with bug-eyed frontman Nathan Fregoso admitting "I can't control all this for long" in a voice thick with excitement. The song's title is surely a rhetorical question, and the closing "Can I Unwind?" - culled from a Claire Sturgess session on Xfm -is yet another slice of intelligent, bouncy alt.pop, shaking itself down with the kiss-off line "This is just the beginning." Which, on this form, is soundingly ominously prophetic.
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