Lazy blog recycling goes meta here, as I quote from a September review of Slum of Legs’ single that in turn quotes from a bit I wrote about their demo tape back in March;

“I said of Slum of Legs’ demo tape earlier this year that; ‘..the three tracks [here] do function VERY MUCH as a demo […] giving only a fleeting, muffled impression of the kind of rampant creativity this unit is capable of’. This single then can be seen to represent the full realisation of this Brighton collective’s potential – a stew of wildly disparate (some might say contradictory) elements, successfully boiled down to a perfectly imperfect essence. A kind of fiendish, exploratory outsider pop music that recognises no limitations, imposes no boundaries upon its members’ divergent impulses, yet somehow works toward the same functional totality. It is a lovely thing to hear.”

[...]


“Weird, dissident, homemade, different from anything YOU’D make – these are some of the key notion that spring to mind where Slum of Legs is concerned I think. I may have bandied around an unpalatable number of dubious band-name comparisons in the preceding paragraphs, but perhaps SOL’s true spiritual predecessors are – naturally - outfits that sound more or less nothing like them. In particular, I’m thinking the sort of feeling that can be found lurking in the obscurest corners of unacknowledged female creativity in the murkiest years of post-punk era. Androids of Mu, The Fates, that sort of thing. Basically, both this single and the demo tape sound like what pop music might have become in 1982 if William S. Burroughs had been writing the script and a stern regiment of well-drilled Raincoats/Au Pairs partisans had been carrying it out.

Even in 2014 – perhaps especially in 2014 - it is exhilarating to hear a band making such imaginative, evocative and open-ended music whilst still remaining ostensibly within the realm of song-based ‘pop’, trawling for thrills in the shallows of the avant garde whilst happily avoiding its tendency toward alienating abstraction. This is Weird Music, no doubt - taking risks, posing questions, demanding attention. But it is also very giving music - a lot of fun for creators and listeners alike.”

Both releases are still listen- & buy-able from Tuff Enuff.

Labels: best of 2014, Slum of Legs