The Whip
Frustration
Manchester may well be associated with, dare I say, sludgy Britrock, but the latest talent to emerge from the UK’s second largest economic region are very strongly electronic. So much so, in fact, that it’s difficult to separate the single ‘Frustration’ from it’s b-side remix.
However, what’s been presented on the cold marble slab before me is the re-assembled remains of some of the eighties bands that serenaded us with distinctly detached vocals and emotional mixes of electronic strings in the chorus with bubbling wiry notes in the verse.
It’s fair to say that the vocal is probably better than most of the bands that you’d compare The Whip to, but the instrumentation is an almost-faithful recreation – possibly even emanating from some vintage synths and drum-sequencers.
On further inspection, the remix is a bit faster, fuzzy at the edges and sounds a little like Dead or Alive. It does highlight some of the hooks a little better than the standard version, but the bouncy bass-line and cotton-eye-joe guitars do make it a little too cheesy.
I’m going to have to reserve my judgement of The Whip for now, because every time I think things are going all wrong, something in the music does open me up to the possibility that this is actually quite good. Unfortunately the b-side was squandered when it could have been used to make me fall into the ‘love it’ category.
Written by Smith on
