Howler - America Give Up
Subjection to British rock media would leave one under the impression that the search for rock music is a difficult venture, but across the pond they're virtually churned out on a production line. Quite why anyone would want yet another rawk band is beyond me - but the latest new candidates are Howler. The Minnesotan fivesome lie somewhere comfortably between garage, grunge and surf rock and whilst those aren't necessarily new genres for us to play with, a band's debut is always going to have a handful of well-written songs, right? Well, kinda. Because America Give Up begins with the almost-painfully slow and dreary 'Beach Sluts', which just feels like a recording studio brainwave that went "let's give it a naughty name and just hammer home the riffs in the chorus". Lyrically, musically and thematically it's so unoriginal that it almost throws their debut into jeopardy - and this isn't helped by the run-of-the-mill 'Back to the Grave',...