3Hos split up a few years ago after releasing a second album that was nearly as good as their first. This review of 'Pegasus Bridge' originated in the "relaunch" issue that proved to be Choke's last gasp.
Burdened with one of the least elegant names in rock history, you'd be forgiven for assuming (as I'm sure many have) that 3Hostwomexicansandatinofspanners are a comedy punk band - a knob gag with distortion. A quick inspection of the song titles on their debut album does little to challenge this view. 'Topless Dudley Streetfighting' and 'Coked Up Supermodels Licking Shit Off A Blind Vicar's Cock', for example, display imaginations in the fine tradition of teenage boys forming bands because it's funny. Which of course it is.
What's great about 3Hos, apart from their ferocious riffing, brummies-with-tourettes vocals and priceless insights into the hell that is modern urban life, is their sheer testosterone-fuelled honesty. For too long, white boy rock in this country has been the preserve of pseudo-sensitive careerists and retro posing morons. It's obvious that this lot formed a band, not to have hit singles or charm women, but to hang out with their mates, play their guitars absurdly loud and let off enough steam to power Stevenson's Rocket from Stockton to fucking Jupiter. Like Mclusky before them, they've got big old tunes and plenty to say for themselves but never let these considerations get too far in the way of swearing a lot and making a shitload of anti-muso noise.
But listen again and there's a bit more to them than that. 'This Man Ruined My Life' is the angriest song about sexual jealousy since Shellac's 'Prayer To God', but there's none of that song's twisted moral clarity, just thinly disguised self-loathing and wounded male pride. It isn't quite as scary as Albini's masterpiece, of course, but it's much, much funnier. Elsewhere, 'She Was A Capitalist' introduces us to the kind of debauched scum not seen in British rock music since the heyday of the Happy Mondays circa 'Fat Lady Wrestlers' while 'Public Order Offences Keep Solicitors In Work' and the phenomenal 'Rock Song' sound like the riot that Kaiser Chiefs predicted but were far too wet to start themselves.
The good news is that the rest of the album is every bit as angry as those songs. The dominant emotion throughout is frustration, both political and sexual. Weighing in at just under the half hour mark, 'Pegasus Bridge' is a bit of a modern punk classic, taking in tirades against religion, corporations, relationships and just about every maddening aspect of life you can think of. At times it seems as if 3Hos actually hate everyone and everything and, in these morally confused, culturally antiseptic times that's extremely refreshing.
Buy this album if you find modern life confusing and alienating. Buy this album if you are horrified by man-bags and moisturisers and equate plucked eyebrows with castration. Buy it if you want to hear a band who make the The Arctic Monkeys sound like they'd lose an arm wrestling match to Marc Almond's nan. Buy it if capitalism makes you want to tear your own throat out but the alternatives all look like one way tickets to the Gulag. Buy it if you like your music loud, dumb and unafraid to piss people off. Buy this album.
This review originally appeared in Choke, issue 14
No comments:
Post a Comment