I really like this album, but I’ve been agonizing for quite a while over the best angle to take in reviewing it. (Award for “most completely inappropriate usage of a variant on the word ‘agony’” is now in the post, I’m assuming.)

Ethical Debating Society are a band I’ve seen play a lot over the past couple of years, and I become more convinced of their general great-ness every single time. They have played at several nights I have helped organize, and I have shared words and social spaces with all of the band’s members on numerous occasions. They’re probably skirting the edges of my “don’t write about bands you know personally” policy, but regardless, I’d be a craven chump to let a record this good pass by without acknowledging it in these pages.

Where to begin though? I don’t know. Aside from tediously comparing them to old punk bands yet again, I’m at a loss for a suitable hook to really hang this damn thing on.

Idea # 1: I suppose the one thing that is liable to hit even the most insensitive of listeners straight away when it comes to EDS is their political engagement. Born from a scrambled legacy of riot grrl-indebted DIY, UK anarcho-punk idealism and a dash of post-hardcore muscle, every element of their existence seems rooted in some kind of fury and opposition – which is just as it should be.

Indeed, I muddled through a fairly fatuous first draft of this review along those lines, before giving in and admitting that pigeonholing EDS as a ‘political’ band just won’t cut it. Certainly, rabble-rousing specifics of the Billy Bragg/Bad Religion variety don’t really enter into the equation here (which is probably for the best), with the band’s material instead tending to evoke a far more nebulous form of gnawing dissatisfaction that, needless to say, is a lot easier to grab hold of and embrace than either toe-curling, preaching-to-the-choir voting advice or obtuse Future of the Left style snark.

And, more to the point, EDS could probably have written twelve songs about banana milkshake and this album would still grab you by the throat and demand attention. As a musical unit of rare power and direction, it is the SOUND of their electrically augmented self-expression that is liable to hit the uninitiated like a brick-bat irrespective of any prissy notions of ideology or lyrical content. Indeed, it is the force of the music itself that helps place the beliefs of its creators beyond doubt - which is surely the acid test of any quote-unquote ‘political’ group.

In short, EDS could (and presumably do) sing about any damn thing they like, and it would still be obvious to all that they aspire to take a few bloody chunks out of the architects and unwitting proponents of the nightmarish Eternal Tory half-life within which our country is currently enshrouded - which sounds like success to me, more or less.

Idea #2, then: When in a particularly grandiose mood, I’ve often been known to claim that every good rock n’ roll band needs to place itself in opposition to *something* in order to effectively harness the spirit of the music. And, given that this pronouncement usually leads immediately to the listing of dozens of groups who have done perfectly well without a hint of opposition to anything in their DNA, it’s good to be proven right for once in the case of EDS.

Lurching about in search of some kind of tangible cultural opposition to hold on to in present-day UK, it’s all to easy to form the impression that what we’re obliged to call the ‘underground’ is dissolute, internalized, marginal - basically devoid of hope. Obviously, this is bollocks – a huge number of great punk bands still exist on these shores, doing what they’ve always done for an audience that’s always been there, as I hope they will come anything short of a nuclear holocaust. But what about beyond that though..? When it comes to reaching out beyond fenced off scenes and sub-cultures, what’s out there for people? If the best attempts at rallying points the quasi-lefty, semi-mainstream media can currently dredge up are the (admittedly diverting) diatribes of Sleaford Mods and the dire Dalston Birthday Party antics of Fat White Family… well, where does that leave us?

Apathy, negativity, escapism and insular sonic wall-building all have their appeal, but as they begin to consume the entire landscape of viable music, perhaps a tonic is needed. (Before we’re drowned in a sea of teeth-grindingly wrong-headed “why isn’t pop music political anymore?” think-pieces, at the very least.)

Are Ethical Debating Society an answer to these woes, hoving into view to load up the survivors? Can they provide an X-Ray Spex style crossover, troubling ears untouched by the more violent and desperate emanations of the current London punk scene? I don’t know. Probably not. Thankfully, their music is too personal and idiosyncratic for that kind of baggage. At the same time too, they are too modest, self-sufficient and good at what they do to bother the twitter feed of some fuckwit at The Guardian – which is just as it should be.

But they still sound bloody refreshing, that’s what I’m getting at, offering invigorating punkoid rock that feels direct, inclusive and unafraid to put itself ‘out there’ without sacrificing the carefully cultivated virtues of abrasion, cynicism, noise. A big arrow pointing forward, as I believe I said in some previous post on the subject.

Idea # 3 brings us to the observation of how rare it is in these slack, screen-staring days to find a band who really stand up and commit to the hard work needed to craft a full album that is actually worth listening to from one end to the other, each song offering a different spin on the material, a different spike upon which to impale one’s troubles.

So often these days, you can find yourself listening to some indie album, trying to *find a way to like it*, searching for something to buy into. “Hmmm…. Sounds pretty good I suppose…. Sounds like band X & band Y, and they’re good…. hmmm, production’s alright… hmmm….” – the hell with it. The way to support worthwhile independent music is tune out such mediocrity, not look for a way to justify it. If it doesn’t move you, cut it out. Life’s too short. It’s not going to get any better next week, or next month, or when you’re persuaded to spend £15 to see them play a support slot at some shithole with a battalion of security guards on the door. Forget about it.

No such problems here, needless to say. It has oft been remarked in these parts in recent years that the 12 – 14 song ‘album’ is often not a helpful format for purveyors of short-ish rock/pop songs to feel they have to adhere to, and indeed, listening to ‘New Sense’ serves to remind us how rare it is to hear an LP that sounds like it was actually subject to some internal quality control rather than just a desperate scrabble for material, comprising a set of battle-hardened songs honed into shape through years of playing before the band ever started setting up mics in a studio to get it on tape. Which is – altogether now – just as it should be.

Which leads us neatly onto Idea #4 – that being to just write about the bloody songs and see where it takes us.

‘Cover Up’ is one of my favourites – a driving, dramatic number that kind of puts me in mind of ‘Shot By Both Sides’ by Magazine. After I heard them play it live a couple of times, I was so convinced it was a cover of some well-known song I couldn’t quite place, I spent ages (positively MINUTES, I tell you) googling variations on “’cover up’ punk song” before concluding it must be an original that just triggered some odd déjà vu response in my mind.

One thing that keeps coming to mind the more I play the album is the possible influence of DC/Dischord sort of stuff on proceedings, whether conscious or otherwise. ‘Mission Creep’ certainly has a bad case of the Fugazis (in the best possible way of course – some sharp, fragmented lyrical venom going on here for sure), whilst ‘Exxxtreme Vintage’ plays with hold-and-release riffs straight out of Nation of Ulysses.

Generally speaking though, this is just muscular, non-denominational punk whose spidery guitar lines, sustained treble notes and chanted, a-cappella vocal bits (v. reminiscent of Crass’s ‘Penis Envy’, it must be said) often verge into ‘post-‘ territory, but thankfully in a way that’s more Gang of Four blare, Au Pairs spite and ATV stomp’n’stumble that it is Joy Div/Siouxsie miserablism.

That last point is worth dwelling on, as, contrary perhaps to what may be gleaned from my mutterings above, EDS aren’t all serious identity politics & state of the nation frowning. The great thing about stretching out across an LP is the opportunity to get weird, and heaven knows, EDS certainly do that on my black-horse pick for favourite track on the album, the irksomely titled ‘Riderrr’. Tucked in awkwardly toward the end of side 2, this number drapes the jerky roar of DIY punk over the bones of a straight-up Girlschool / Donnas party tune, its water’s muddied further by the inexplicable addition of a kazoo, emerging like some lost Slampt/Messthetics band suddenly taking a random swing at a ZZ Top-style feel-good stadium epic – a truly delightful concoction.

So, after all that palaver, looks like I’ve just reverted back to comparing EDS to old punk bands after all. Ah well. I bet I’m the first (and most probably last) to compare them to ZZ Top at least, so that’s something.

For all the glib comparisons I’m throwing around though, it’s worth stressing that their is absolutely no ‘imitation game’ business going on with EDS. Very much the polar opposite of the kind of band who exist primarily to launch reenactments of the members’ record collections, the band’s determination to sound like no one except themselves, and their corresponding embrace of what for want of a better term we’ll call ‘the DIY ethic’ is crucial.

Though they’ve captured a fantastic sound on this record (drums are clear as day, the distortion on Kris’s guitar is a vicious roar, and basically it’s one of the most exhilarating ‘band in a room’ sounds I’ve heard in an age), such technical accomplishment of off-set by the band’s belief (oft-stated on stage) that everyone can/should do this. Not an original sentiment by any means in the realm of punk/indie/whatever, but one that comes across here in the very bones of the recording & performance.

Like all good punk records, there is no mystery or unseen wizardry to veil the band’s methodology here. What an eager young listener hears here is exactly what they hear when their own band goes into the practice room, overlaid with a few years worth of commitment and hard work. And what an older, more jaded listener (hi!) gets meanwhile is the renewed realisation that there’s no magic formula or secret code to the way guitar lines crash together and drums roll and stutter to light whatever fire it is that illuminates our favourite records; it’s all just there waiting for some people with the guts to pick it up and run with it.

As noted, Ethical Debating Society won’t save the world, flay the greedy rich or tilt the tilt axis away from imminent self-immolation - just as no isolated pocket of individuals can, or can be expected to. But as small-on-global-scale gestures go, I think they’ve done their fucking best, and for giving us one of this ugly new era’s first and most definitive blasts of a kind of music that speaks to a hope beyond endless benefit gigs for no-hoper splinter groups, and that might carry the potential to get us reasonable, everyday people stoked up with a bit of fire and excitement as we trudge through whatever travails face us day by day, and for that alone, they deserve all the ham-fisted plaudits I can throw at them. As far as punk rock goes, it’s just as it should be.

‘New Sense’ can be bought here from Oddbox.

Labels: album reviews, Ethical Debating Society