Hailing from St. Albans, THE SCRATCH may be geographically immune to the trendier London scenes, but their riotously intelligent self-made pop has been a much-needed provincial thorn in the industry’s side for the best part of a decade now.
Since 2002 they have served up three fiercely independent albums and eleven singles and continue to chip away at the shiny veneer of the establishment. Their debut album ‘D.I.Y’ initially landed on our doorstep as 2003 rolled into 2004, coming to us via the group’s own Ponyland imprint on a series of ‘home printed’ CDS. The two singles culled from it – ‘X-Ray Eyes’ and the memorable ‘I Relax to Spiral Scratch’ – were issued in small runs of 7” and 10” singles respectively and all have long since sold out. As a result, the LP has attained something akin to legendary status among the band’s fan base, so to herald the band’s arrival in the digital age, here it is again, re-mastered and available on CD and via download.
The title ‘D.I.Y’ is wholly apt. This is a record harking back (in spirit as much as sound) to the original British Independent ideal. The same Punk and Post-Punk ethic that allowed The Buzzcocks’ ‘Spiral Scratch’ EP and Adrian Borland’s pre-The Sound combo The Outsiders’ debut LP to be released on small self-established labels of their own: leads that were soon followed by brilliantly diverse labels like Rough Trade, Factory and Postcard.
In The Scratch’s case, ‘D.I.Y’ was just that, as it was mostly pieced together in lead guitarist Grim’s flat in Islington. However, while it fizzes with an anarchic spirit, that shouldn’t be misconstrued as shoddy and lo-fi. ‘D.I.Y’ is a vivid splurge of a record, full of attitude and great tunes from four lads whose primary urge seems to be to record whatever sounds cool to their ears and bugger everyone else. Wasn’t that, after all, what Punk was supposed to be about before the Corporations moved in?
Large portions of the album rock pretty damn hard. The terminally ace ‘I Relax to Spiral Scratch’ is a great homage to the independent spirit and stuffed with effervescent, Buzzcocks-y guitars, while tracks like ‘Rotten Soul’ and ‘Supermodel’ also do that frustrated, youthful Punk-Pop thing akin to the ‘Cocks or Ash with layers of cool to spare. ‘Alcohol’s A Depressant’, meanwhile, is both a cautionary and celebratory ode to excessive drinking (“I clean my teeth and I go to bed/ I’ve still got your taste in my head”) that most of us can relate to of a Sunday morning.
|
The Scratch are about a lot more than simply stinging riffs and sneering vocals, however. Tracks like ‘Brainstorm’ and ‘X-Ray Eyes’ have more than a touch of the late’80s/ early ‘90s Indie-Crossover about them, with loops and beats recalling genre-mashers like Jesus Jones or The Shamen in their great initial guise. ‘Texture to the Flava’, on the other hand, opens with a guitar figure akin to ‘She Sells Sanctuary’-era Cult, while ‘Back to Ten’ wrong-foots you with its’ deceptively mellow introduction before going for the burn big time. Perhaps best of all is the closing ‘Logical Mind’, which is again built around House-y beats and electronica and brings some lush balm for the soul to switch off and float away to. Not what you’d expect but twice as good as a result.
‘D.I.Y’, then, deserves serious re-appraisal. Recorded on a much lower budget than many under-achieving mainstream albums, it is the sound of a bunch of sussed, lippy upstarts on fire creatively and turning limited resources into something truly triumphant. It’s all the proof you need that wild pop bombs can still rock the provinces even in these conservative times.
The Scratch on Myspace
Ponyland Records online
|
