Logo
DiS Needs You: Save our site »
  • Logo_home2
  • Records
  • In Depth
  • In Photos
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Search
  • Community
  • Records
  • In Depth
  • Blog
  • Community

THIS SITE HAS BEEN ARCHIVED AND CLOSED.

Please join the conversation over on our new forums »

If you really want to read this, try using The Internet Archive.

Shooting At Unarmed Men

Soon There Will Be...

Label: Too Pure Release Date: 31/10/2005

11666
alcxxk by Christopher Alcxxk November 6th, 2005

To me, the whole wonky, skrankly indie rock thing rests on structure. You can write a pretty cool, fucked up syncopated guitar twang riff by knocking your guitar over. Seriously – try it yourself. Just make a loop of your guitar falling over, preferably letting it mute and scrape along the side of your bed as it falls. Chuck a well chosen chuggy one note bass line underneath and a solid beat and there you have it, a rich soil in which to plant your verbal musings. What separates the men from the boys, however, is how you string these serendipitous stranglings together. Take Shellac's 'Prayer To God'. Try as I might, I can’t imagine those chords having been written in any other way than simple trial and error – grabbing the guitar and grinding fingers into angry, angry shapes. But the point is, there's so much more to The Good Stuff than just a riff that'll set your teeth on edge. It's about how it's developed, how it's used, what it means, or chooses not to mean or whatever.

Shooting At Unarmed Men have all the influences in place – a bit of Dischord Records, chirpy major chord post punk à la the Futureheads, Pixies. All darn well and good, but imagine if you were to take one of those sounds and just loop one of their scratchy riffs and plug it into a versechorusversechorus structure. Not a lot of fun. Hence the only remotely fulfilling track here is slowie 'When Potent Means Don't', in which some attempt at songwriting appears to have been made. The guitars enter irregularly but somehow organically, complementing the anguished vocals pretty well.

Whereas a band like Half Man Half Biscuit restrain their drums and rocking tendencies so that their lyrics can shine through, here any oomph in the music is lost just to expose some plainly banal lyrics, delivered in a hoarse, ugly, and, frankly, wacky manner by ex-mclusky backing vocalist Jon Chappell. "Can anybody cope with another song?" he asks on 'Four Eyed McClayvie', begging for a smart-arse negative put-down. We shouldn't deny them the opportunity to prove themselves, but for now this isn't good enough.

  • 3
    Christopher Alcxxk's Score
Log-in to rate this record out of 10
Share on
   
Love DiS? Become a Patron of the site here »


LATEST


  • Drowned in Sound's Albums of the Year 2025


  • Why Music Journalism Matters in 2024


  • Drowned in Sound is back!


  • Drowned in Sound's 21 Favourite Albums of the Year: 2020


  • Drowned in Sound to return as a weekly newsletter


  • Lykke Li's Sadness Is A Blessing



Left-arrow

Ralfe Band

Swords

Mobback
11667
11668

Ninja High School

Young Adults Against Suicide

Mobforward
Right-arrow


LATEST

    news


    Drowned in Sound's Albums of the Year 2025

  • 106149
  • news


    Why Music Journalism Matters in 2024

  • 106145

    news


    Drowned in Sound is back!

  • 106143
  • news


    Drowned in Sound's 21 Favourite Albums of the Y...

  • 106141

    news


    Drowned in Sound to return as a weekly newsletter

  • 106139
  • Playlist


    Lykke Li's Sadness Is A Blessing

  • 106138

    Festival Preview


    Glastonbury 2019 preview playlist + ten alterna...

  • 106137
  • Interview


    A Different Kind Of Weird: dEUS on The Ideal Crash

  • 106136
MORE


    news


    Drowned in Sound is back!

  • 106143
  • feature


    Carnivals of the Grotesque: Nick Cave on Dig, L...

  • 33717

    feature


    Discography reassessed: Bright Eyes in perspective

  • 77693
  • Interview


    “We’ve been dismantling the rules since Antidot...

  • 100747

    review


    Kate Nash - Made Of Bricks

  • 26283
  • news


    The DiS Community's... 101 Favourite Albums

  • 85886

    review


    Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That...

  • 12425
  • Interview


    Interview: Bjork talks piracy, punk, Lady Gaga ...

  • 79700
MORE

Drowned in Sound
  • DROWNED IN SOUND
  • HOME
  • SITE MAP
  • NEWS
  • IN DEPTH
  • IN PHOTOS
  • RECORDS
  • RECOMMENDED RECORDS
  • ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
  • FESTIVAL COVERAGE
  • COMMUNITY
  • MUSIC FORUM
  • SOCIAL BOARD
  • REPORT ERRORS
  • CONTACT US
  • JOIN OUR MAILING LIST
  • FOLLOW DiS
  • GOOGLE+
  • FACEBOOK
  • TWITTER
  • SHUFFLER
  • TUMBLR
  • YOUTUBE
  • RSS FEED
  • RSS EMAIL SUBSCRIBE
  • MISC
  • TERM OF USE
  • PRIVACY
  • ADVERTISING
  • OUR WIKIPEDIA
© 2000-2025 DROWNED IN SOUND