Review Summary: Great EP from an almost completely unknown band and all of those that love music in a theatrical and artistic sense will find it interesting: it is dark, violent, plenty of rage and emotions and you can feel that when you hear it.
A restless echoed melody starts fading in from the dark until it floods our ears at the same time that the voice of James Smith comes up as a Nick Cave of the XXI century reciting that ode of a fisherman and without even notice it we are at equator of this great starting tune singing along <em>"down, down, doooownnn"</em> to end up with an ecstasy of emotions abruptly cut off and leaving us on a high, anxiously asking for more.
<em>The Trawler's Man Code</em> is the best cover letter that PWGG could ever write: the unconventional flow of the song and its great composition drive us through constant growing anxiety, giving us a rest in the middle so we can assimilate it better. Alice's voice on it gives it the sensation of completeness that it needs and opens the door to one of the best post-punk works of 2012.
Unfortunately, the big high got in that first track gets somehow broken when <em>Today I A Man</em> arrives. Don't get me wrong, that speedy noisy punk track is a damn good one: it has a mixture of power, rage and satire well put together; but it just doesn't reach the expectations left by the first one. Once again, we can recognise the dark influences of Nick Cave in James' recital but no in such an artistically way as we would like after such a good intro.
After this two first tunes now we don't know what to expect, which is good in some way as anything that could surprise us would be welcome. <em>Tremor</em> is, in my honest opinion, the best tune of the the band so far: it is an actual expression of art in which Alice participates giving to it the perfect shape that it needs: It's like having PJ Harvey and Nick Cave giving free rein to their darkest feelings to end up falling apart as the music flow goes. It's not that the tune is good alone, it is also much more aligned with what we've been introduced in the first track and makes the EP more consistent without no doubt.
And then we are left with <em>She Will Always Be My Anchor</em>, which comes smoothly violent, impetuous and dark and then, as with the previous ones, give us a little break. That cycle is repeated again in the same tune and finally another ecstasy of noise bangs our ears bringing a spectacular close to the EP.
Summarising, <em>Tragic Lost; We Had Such a Lovely House</em> is a great EP from an almost completely unknown band and all of those that love music in a theatrical and artistic sense will find it interesting: it is dark, violent, plenty of rage and emotions and you can feel that when you hear it. I give it a 3.5 since, after listening to it several times, it seems a bit unfinished: second track doesn't come along too much with other three and, at the end, you notice a somehow repetitive pattern in all the tunes: crescendo-downer-crescendo; this is a bit disappointing as in their previous EP that pattern is no so obvious. In the other hand, it would be great to hear Alice participating more in some of the tunes, she is an essential part of them and without her they would sound as complete as they do. Anyway, really looking forward for more work from this band!
The best:
- Tremor
- The Trawler's Man Code
