We Don't Need Honesty

On Friday I saw London’s latest Post-Punk hopefuls ‘Electricity in Our Homes’ play 93 Feet East in Brick Lane. The sound was terrible but I got the gist of what was going on and liked what I could discern within the cavernous reverberant din of the venues band room. On their myspace they list Postcard Records as an influence but (save a riff lifted wholesale from Josef K’s ‘Fun and Frenzy’) EIOH are less the Sound of Young Scotland, more the sound of late 70’s Lower East Side NY, with DNA and Teenage Jesus and The Jerks offering more obvious points of reference for their taut and clipped No-Wave.

The bands combination of cut glass guitars, monotone vocals and shirts done up to the top button has been well worn (particularly in London) to the point of cliché, but the curiously tribal effect produced by the lack of syncopation in their rhythm section gives EIOH a distinct identity and a definite edge over their peers. By its nature the music is repetitive and discordant but no track is allowed to outstay its welcome; Electricity In Our Homes songs don’t so much finish as stop dead in their tracks the minute they’ve said all they need to say.
I’m still unsure whether closing the set with their deconstruction of punk standard ‘Louie Louie’ (a tribute undoubtedly to the famed ‘Jon the Postman’, who clambered on stage to sing the Kingsmans number at the end of Fall and Joy Division gigs) was inspired or one of the worst examples of self consciously referential art school cynicism I’ve ever witnessed.
Probably both, in which case all credit to them.