I'm posting this now because, while Mooz never had the success they deserved outside Bristol, it would be criminal if they were forgotten. Jess and Rasha have both continuted to write excellent music since the band's split while Amy is a member of Bristol's best party / festival band The Glitzy Baghags. I've added Everett True's obituary of the band as a postscript (see Comments). It seems he was the only person outside Bristol who understood.
The long-awaited debut album from one of Bristol’s most admired groups was always going to be subject to intense scrutiny (by long-term observers like me, at least). Having watched Mooz countless times since their earliest shows, I still didn’t quite know what to expect.After three or more years of mainly local gigs, they probably have enough material for two or three albums by now, but due to the length of time it’s taken to get this album released, it’s more of a ‘best of so far’ rather than a set of new songs.
So we get the scratchy tension of “Grit”, all fastmoving urban imagery and hard-rain breakbeats. This new version captures the mood of the song better than the more dance-orientated, rhythm-heavy version from the old demo, giving the squeaks and groans of Paula’s mighty cello pride of place at the claustrophobic core of the track.
It seems the recording has been designed to focus on the atmospheric and melodic elements of their sound, rather than just piling on the drums in 90’s Bristol fashion. The opening “Pepperpot” and dirt-blues classic “Stretching” are far more successful for this approach, though it leaves the usually driving “M32” sounding a bit disembodied; the snare drum and grunge-bass mixed too low to allow the song to (jazz)rock to its full potential.
“Stretching” is the simplest of the highlights here; an old song that has improved with age. Jess’s lyrics- “sucking, fucking…someone I don’t know!” - are as seedy and disorientated as ever. “Seesaw” is brilliantly spooky, its abstract melody (apparently created on a musical saw) refusing to settle comfortably into a conventional groove until absolutely necessary.
Other familiar songs collected here include the minimal, funky “Bounce” and a final version of “Watch This Space”, probably the band’s best known song, and still the most devastating use of Mooz’s unique vocal harmonies, arranged perfectly to evoke unease and exhilaration in equal measures. Those same vocal harmonies are used to far subtler, but equally enjoyable, effect on the closing epic “S.I”.
A fitting end to the album, “S.I” is a fine demonstration of how far the group have come as songwriters, arrangers and musicians since their early days. This story-song kicks off so languorously and dreamlike, you’d think Mooz were trying to out-mellow Morcheeba.
Of course, there’s far more to “SI” than that: a strong narrative in the wandering blues tradition (“I left my home town…”) plus some devilish rhythmic twists and turns, a plaintive cello line and shifting vocal harmonies all building elegantly towards a final, inevitable climax. In short, quite a song; and perfectly placed to hint at the even better album this band undoubtedly have in them.
Being Mooz, this couldn’t possibly have gone wrong. Mooz are unique - unafraid to confront the recent legacy of their home city (drum and bass and the jazz/breakbeat crossover), yet with roots in a more spontaneous tradition going back to the funk-roots-punk of The Pop Group and The Slits. The groove is in their hearts and the blues is putty in their hands.
“The Wheel” is a top-notch collection of some of the band’s finest moments, a constantly changing mood of an album, by turns tense, relaxed, romantic and confrontational.
It’s probably not the best record they’ll ever make, especially if the new songs in the live set are anything to go by. Nonetheless, “The Wheel” is an album I will go back to time after time, nostalgically thinking back to those strange days when Mooz were only famous in Bristol. A fine debut from a very special band.
This review originally appeared in Choke, Issue 7
Mooz, by veteran rock journalist Everett True. Originally published in 'Careless Talk Costs Lives'.
ReplyDelete"You stupid bastards. You all went out and bought Radio 4 and Interpol records when you could've been succumbing to the sweet grooves of Bristol's Mooz: atonal punk rock and the rhythmic splendor of ESG; four girls who understood that silence is a rhythm too.
They started up sweet and ended up brilliantly sullen and abrasive; their dissonant disaffection and jazz-tainted refrains couldn't have been further away from the populist cheerleader-ism of Yeah Yeah Yeahs if they tried. Strings got scraped. Voices got raised. Atmosphere got ladled.
Mooz's second - and final - album, My Property (Blood Red Sounds) was recorded in one afternoon as a CDR to flog at their final gig, and is a more brilliant documentation of the Careless Talk Cost's Lives aesthetic than anything this side of Young People or Erase Errata (although Gullick would hate it). It features the layered harmonies and deep sarcasm of 'Girl Watcher': it has a song called PMT. There are bonus live tracks. Fingers are running down fretboards. Jeez! What more do you want?
I'd place Mooz next to three, great unheralded bands from the early Eighties - The Transmitters, polital girl duo Toxic Shock and The Leopards ('Strange Rhythmical Music') - and say this once more for all those who weren't paying attention and think Help She Can't Swim provide a challenge: you stupid bastards. How could you let this go unnoticed? You fuckers.