Review Summary: The message is: if you survive a lost weekend, hopefully you wake up to burnt toast
Many years ago, I got to see Six by Seven in a pub basement in Leeds. I didn't know they'd scaled back to a three piece and were trying to figure out how to turn standard guitar band music into organ music. It was still impressive – hands down the loudest organ led show I'd ever seen. They were plastering purple keyboard noise over the crowd, and if you held out your hand, the air between the punters would make it look like it was vibrating.
I still felt a little cheated; the setup on this record was what I wanted. Thinner, vicious, and disgusted. Their debut (the excellent "The things that we make") had much more of a textural angle - more lengthy songs built on drones and feedback. That sound is represented here by the reined in "Ten places to die", but there's more menace this time around. Singer Chris Olley stays true to the title and lists likely death spots, and once he's done, the band pulses with guitar detritus over martial drums until the whole thing collapses.
"The closer you get" does have an extremely specific sound that sets it apart from the debut - that turn of century run raggedness which dispels some the earlier shoegaze style. "Eat junk become junk" and "Another love song" surge with the leftovers of the 90's big beat sound, a rock reflection of rave winding down. "New Year" provides the heartfelt stadium singalong that sounds like it was written for a garage, and "Slab Square" is a breakneck hedonistic ode to not very much at all. It's got more abandon and wildness, despite being boxed into more straightforward songs.
In the back end of the record, Six by Seven achieve that most difficult thing - a song you could take your lighter out to but doesn't make you feel ill. "England and a broken radio" floats along on a simple strum pattern, while Olley sings as if he can't feel his legs anymore. The vocal effect is reminiscent of a badly tuned radio, while the guitar lines drip all over the melody like tears brought on by too much cheap sherry.
There was a period in my life when everything seemed a little tacky and ugly - I suspect most people go through phases where the party strip of the city looks like it's snorting out dragon steam; the late night vendors look like they're wearing rags and they're going to lure you to your doom. You imagine a red light shining on everyone's face. The sound of Chris Olley howling on "My life is an accident" is a reminder of times when my overriding reaction to the world was repulsion. Oddly enough, I enjoy the experience in record form.
If it all sounds little sordid, right at the end they wrap up the record with another sterling ballad, and it almost croons that everything's gonna be ok. Six by Seven taketh and giveth.
