Long since consigned to most discerning folks’ ‘lost heroes’ file, Manchester’s INCA BABIES’ did a highly credible Lazarus-style act with their ‘comeback’ LP ‘Death Message Blues’ in 2010. Sure, it may have taken ‘em over two decades to follow up 1988’s ‘Evil Hour’, but with frontman Harry Stafford honing maliciously great new tunes such as ‘Phantom Track’ and the defiant ‘The Miracle That Holds Me In Its Hands’ and the fine new rhythm section of Vince Hunt and Rob Haynes firing on all cylinders, theirs was one of rock’s few second comings worth subscribing to.
Disciples old and new oughtta hang around for this new waxing too. Their first 7” since 1987’s belting ‘Buster’s On Fire’; it’s a nominal double A-side affair with two fab new tracks. The first’s an edgy, prowling beast called ‘My Sick Suburb’ and it’s a kinda love-hate love song about the original Inca line-up’s home base: Manchester’s Hulme Crescent flats. Despite the place’s notoriety, it was still (as this writer can personally attest) right at the very heart of the city’s counter-culture back in the 1980s and early ‘90s and its’ spirit is brilliantly evoked by the Boz Hayward video that vividly preceded the song’s arrival.
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Double-A ‘Tower of Babel’ deals with the eventual destruction of the same Crescent flats (“we’re gonna pull it down with a mighty sound/ we’re gonna smash it into the ground”). A classy, Gallon Drunk-ish workout with trumpet serenades and tumbling bar-room piano joining the band’s patented soul-snatching Biblical blues, it walks with a glinting steel blade and evil in its heart and despite the subject matter, it’s all the reason you need to rejoice in these impecunious times. Good to hear you’re still in such rude health, gentlemen.
Inca Babies on MySpace
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