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Grandmas House: Grandmas House – EP review

The self-titled debut EP by Grandmas House adds another chunky layer of kudos to Bristol’s punk rock reputation. Jon Kean reviews.

The post Grandmas House: Grandmas House – EP review appeared first on Louder Than War.

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Grandmas HouseGrandmas House: Grandmas House

(Brace Yourself Records)

Vinyl/DL

Out Now

The debut EP by Bristol’s trio of riotous grrlhood, Grandmas House, is brief and abrasive. Listening to Grandmas House feels somewhat comparable to visiting a dental hygienist: you can literally feel the crud being blasted off you as you listen to it and you feel so much shinier and so much less stained afterwards. One blissful dissimilarity to a dental hygienist, however, is that the warm glow derived from acquiring a Grandmas House EP on gold-coloured vinyl will only cost you a tenner, rather than having to stump up whatever the current king’s ransom is for a swift gnasher blast (probably equivalent to the price of a gallon of unleaded petrol by the end of October).

Opener Golden is a punky, doom-rock, gloom-grunge ritualistic chant, seemingly seeking to exorcise the demons of capitalism. The more that Yasmin Berndt incants “Come sun, come rain, I’m still gonna shine” and dares filthy lucre to “Make me scream out loud” in defiance, the more it feels like dragging all that glitters through the grit and the gravel before drop-kicking greed into the nearest wheeliebin. Never Out Of Luck adopts the voice of an unapologetically arrogant man, convinced of his own charmed existence, charmless to a harmful extent. Zoë Zinsmeister’s bassline gives the song an underlying mod-like, modish strut whilst the vocals remain pure punk.

Rawness is the common denominator of the tracks Girl and Feed Me. On Girl, waves of guitar swell like waves of desire, Poppy Dodgson’s drums the beating, lovestruck heart. A simple but intoxicated lyric, “Girl, yeah you drive me crazy,/ Girl, yeah you drive me mad” loops, the one thought that governs all consciousness. Feed Me perfectly captures the simultaneous “I’m truly living!” and the “I’m truly dying!” sense that a hangover brings. “Peel me off the pavement” and “Soak me in the bathtub” could equally be wretched or devil-may-care, a sign of woeful surrender or a joyful submission to the consequences of over-indulgence.

Their self-titled EP closes with Pasty, inspired either by a girl they saw in Bristol selling the aforementioned savoury rough puff pastry delight, or the sheer excitement of getting two pasties for the price of one. Perhaps it was the alluring combination of the seller and her BOGOF offer that was suitably entrancing to inspire the song. Either way, it provides a thematically lighter, quirky conclusion, whilst maintaining the essential onslaught of the EP’s sonic barrage.

What can you normally get in eleven minutes at Grandma’s House? Chat about how much you’ve grown, a slightly wet kiss and a fond squeeze of the cheek (face cheek) between the grandmaternal thumb and index finger? A cup of tea and a slab of cake? A cheeky, conspiratorial back-handed donation of a pound coin (but don’t tell your mum)?

What can you get from a Grandmas House EP in eleven minutes? A pair of tirades on vulgar materialism and on complacent, swaggering masculinity, some bristling sexual tension, the howl of a hangover and a paean to pasties (their potential plural purchase and the pleasing presence of their purveyor).

You can find Grandmas House via Bandcamp, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

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All words by Jon Kean. More writing by Jon on Louder Than War can be found at his author’s archive. He tweets as @keanotherapy.

Source: louderthanwar.com

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