PRESIDENT
FETCH – Cruel beats ... gently slumbering
(CD,
hepcat)
Interested in a wild ride? President got into my player
for daring to cover “Kick out the Jams” and getting away with it
decently, which in itself is an enormous feat. But they deliver such a high
octane blast of geared up garage punkrock, I take out my dust covers and
start to wash down my old machine. The title is completely wrong, because
the beats are heavy and straightforward and nothing at all is asleep here.
Rather revved up and burning with fire. Thirteen times, one after the other,
they kick and pound on their guitars and drums, while the singer shouts and
growls about something or other, that mostly has to do with girls, booze and
probably cars or probably with the red patch of skin the singer found on the
back of his legs this morning under the shower and now contemplates visiting
the dermatologists. Hehe, no skip that, they are all abour girls, booze and
the energy that comes from rocking out. If somebody invented a power plant
that could induce the energy produced during a rock concert the world would
not need any more oil. Then the sheiks in Arabia could skip international
terrorism and build a few hard rock cafes or punk rock clubs for their
people.
There is music that makes you smell beer and sweat and
cigarette smoke. From the first riffs through to the very last song this
record burns with pure unkindled rock’n’roll energy. A very dirty,
sleazy but also high energy and high velocity. Within the quite small
borders the President Fetch has set for himself in this genre – we used to
call it surfpunk in the Eighties and I very amically remember a band called
Psychotic Youth as an example – they produce a likeable range of variety.
In the beginning the straight punkrock stompers dominate the picture. While
the rest of the records lives up to the very first promise, It is later on,
in songs like “Gestalt” or “Give Blood, Celine” are adorned with
more creative things such as background vocals or dynamic breaks in the
songs. These songs still sound like everybody who listens to this better
oughta hbe wearing a leather jacket, studs and a thirst for a brewski. That,
by the way, is danish for beer. Okay, so it is something sounding like
“oil”, but you get my drift, right.
Currently I am feeling not up to notch, because the
last weeks were a lot of work (no, I am not emo-whining, I am explaining)
and yesterday night was a long night with probably one beer to many. But
“cruel beats ... gently slumbering” is like a double Red Bull
concentrated with Wodka. A deadly dose of energy. Something new and
original? Definitely not, but so much wild fun that you can kickstart a V8
with it. It is wild, raw and uninhibited (imminent danger) that it makes me
remember why I used to listen to so much garage rock and punk back in the
days when I still felt younger than today. In between all the experimental
and noise music on this page, in between all the artists that want to expand
the notions of what is and what is not music, and what a guitar can do, it
is really good and refreshing to listen to something so straight and
straightforward to set the record just as straight. That is a lot of
straights for some sweating, drug abusing, ear piercing rockers set out to
rock the house until the walls break. Well, one man’s Joseph is another
man’s Joe, but in this instant here, both Joe and Joseph will agree that
President Fetch is a damn wild man and a rocker on top of that.
