The Megaphonic Thrift
Buffalo Bar, London
08/06/2010

Nothing wrong with De Laughter and co., of course, but there’s still something to be said for the possibility that The Megaphonic Thrift could, as that soubriquet suggests, be a sort of anti-Polyphonic Spree, and, indeed, they’re certainly a much more compact proposition and noticeably low on levity. However, to take this path to its logical conclusion, they’d also have to be decidedly spartan-sounding, but, instead, they’ve opted for epicness over economy at every turn. Excellent call!

Mind you, even just setting their stall out they still manage to tilt at ruthless gigantism: ‘You Saw The Silver Line’ is a vividly scrawled My Bloody Valentine card on which Richard Myklebust sings like a man fighting off a cobra in slow motion, and by ‘Talks Like A Weed King’, some five minutes into the set, Fredrik Vogsborg is already tussling with his guitar as though it’s the most wilful and steroid-stuffed of steeds, suggesting that perhaps the narcotic element to their canon errs rather more on the side of panic. Certainly, it’s a struggle to recall a band more fragmentary and frazzled since early, melting-before-your-eyes-era Mercury Rev, and there are times when it appears that it’s only the stern, Tina Weymouth-style steeliness of keyboardist and Emma Pollock soundalike Linn Fr?dekal that’s holding them together.

Which, of course, makes this a terrific tour de force, and a wonderful tour through the more ornery corners of REALLY! NOISY! indie through the ages. ‘Exploding Eyes’, for instance, would feel like an offcut from any of the classic grunge precursors were it not for an excitingly excessive muffliness and constant warping-vinyl elongation, ‘Acid Blues’ is nothing so much as a delicious high-speed scuffle between AC Acoustics and Six. By Seven, and ‘Queen Of Noise’ dissolves into a blizzard of effects pedals with a disturbed childlike charm. Gloriously incautious, mind, but a veritable embarrassment of riches too. 

Iain Moffat