You may not have heard of Sukilove, but apparently David Bowie has - and he thinks very highly of this all-star Belgian band. The Natural Regression EP contains four as-yet-unreleased tunes from Sukilove: one new version of an old song, two fresh tracks and a live recording.
First up is the new version of the title track from Sukilove’s second album You Kill Me, which begins with spooky music-box chimes before frontman Pascal Deweze enters the soundscape to lament a bizarrely dysfunctional (and, one hopes, fictional) relationship. “You Kill Me” is a moody track with a tongue-in-cheek comedic edge, and I can’t be sure whether those tremelo’d spaghetti western guitar chords are mocking me or mocking themselves … I suspect that Sukilove are more than capable of doing both at the same time.
The brace of new tunes in the middle of the Natural Regression EP are a little bit more straightforward. “Beauty Is Here” brings a more old-school psychedelic vibe to the proceedings, with Sukilove sounding a little like The Beatles might have done if they had stayed in Germany until someone else discovered the psychedelic sound. Hazy and summery but with a slightly melancholic tinge, it has all the best aspects of the music of the Summer Of Love without all the overblown hippie trappings. “Headfire” has a similar sound but a darker tone, with clangorous guitars, a slouching moody bassline, and more dysfunctional relationship lyrics.
After a chaotic ride through the presets of an old synthesizer, The Natural Regression EP closes with a live performance of “Pretty Kitty”, which sounds like Butthole Surfers spoofing The Cure. Haunted house keys and discordant staccato guitar work are the order of the day, and here we get to see that we weren’t mistaken about the humour in “You Kill Me” … or possibly that Deweze has some rather strange phobic attitudes toward cats.
The Belgian music scene seems to specialise in gloriously off-kilter guitar bands, and Sukilove are no exception to that rule of thumb. The Natural Regression EP is a little bit winsome and a little bit weird, but that’s no bad thing – in a world of wannabes and style clones, it’s good to know bands like Sukilove are out there doing their own thing.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: pop, psychedelic, rock, Sukilove
