New Creases
S/T CDEP
Gnarly As I Wanna Be Records
By Rich Cocksedge
(SugarBuzz UK)
SugarBuzz Magazine
There’s a lot to be said about MySpace and how easy it is for truly awful bands to gain a ‘presence’ in the world today. Sometimes I yearn for those days backs in the 1980’s when you read a review in a fanzine like Maximumrocknroll or Flipside and sent off your $ to some unknown place in the USA and just hope that one day you’d receive a record and that you’d actually like it.
However, nostalgia is in the past and these days one just has to search through the dross to realise there are some diamonds that shine brightly out there, and it is thanks to the internet that we are able to search them down relatively easily.
New Creases are one of these diamonds and I’m not entirely sure if I found them or they found me on MySpace, but one thing is for certain, I am extremely glad that our paths crossed. Listening to the tracks posted on their MySpace page had me
desperate to find their five track EP and this required a bit of Sherlock Holmes style sleuthing with some good luck thrown in. Thanks to a guy at Different Kitchen Records here in the UK, who themselves had sold out of the EP, I ended up getting a link to the label who had put out the CD and I contacted Max Wheeler at Gnarly As I Want To Be Records to find out if he had any copies left and if so could he sell me one. Having heard back from Max and then making use of Paypal, I then had to sit back to await the arrival of the CD.
A week or so later I had a nifty little package dropped through my door (Max had sent me a few freebie CD’s as well – hats off to him for that) and I headed straight for the CD player, inserted the disc, stood back and waited .....
That wait proved to be worth it, as had been the search for this CD as it was one of those ‘WOW!’ moments when you realise that this indeed was the diamond you’d been expecting and that not only did it not disappoint but it exceeded all expectations. Five tracks (four originals and one cover) of expertly performed punk pop but with a sloppy edge to it that brings to mind bands like This Is My Fist and Discount, without slavishly copying any band. This three-piece, with dual female/male vocals, are able to give you hooks, tunes aplenty as they race through the five tracks and make it an enjoyable mini-feast with the only downside being that it left me wanting more (an album sometime please?!!). The cover is of the mighty Jawbreaker’s “The Boat Dreams From The Hill” and it is the split vocals that makes this something other than a straight copy so for the second time in this review I will take off my hat, this time to the band, for an inspired choice and a wonderful execution of this song.
I urge anyone with a wide ranging music taste to contact the band and Max Wheeler and shell out the $5 to get hold of this little gem – I’m sure there won’t be many left and you won’t be disappointed as it will be money well spent.