Deadletter have you ever the place they need you earlier than you even begin listening to their debut album ‘Hysterical Power’. The title alone units the temper: the post-punk band are in thrall to life’s contradictions, busking on the crossroads the place magnificence meets brutality, fearsomely sturdy whereas additionally embracing the hysteria.
The Yorkshire-bred group are actually primarily based – the place else – in South London, and so they’ve pitched themselves with this document someplace between the readability of style forefathers Journal and Gang of 4 and the maximal overflow of contemporaries Black Midi and Squid. Broody, crunching guitars is perhaps their staple food plan, however Deadletter perceive the worth of letting the sunshine in too.
We hear it on ‘Relieved’, which tingles with the jaunty dartiness of early Franz Ferdinand, Alfie Husband’s skipping drumbeats powering the group. Frontman Zac Lawrence has a wry Northern wit, singing concerning the British social paralysis of bearing the corporate of somebody you’re too well mannered to stroll away from: “I’m far too vertebrate to face you with my backbone,” he sings.
‘Extra Warmth!’ is one other barnburner, a monitor about accepting the necessity for change that wails underneath its personal taut, claustrophobic pressure. Lawrence dizzily cries out for “extra warmth”, certainly figuring out that any extra and the entire thing will combust into an excellent bonfire.
It has been a giant few years for this sort of studious art-punk, however in a scene that may be too po-faced, Lawrence’s vibrant writing brings some welcome sparks of humour – even when the subject material stays darkish. Take ‘Deus Ex Machina’, which the band wrote amid the wreckage of the Liz Truss disaster. “Hilarious as stand-up, extra like a sit-down or a law-low,” he sings. “This isn’t comedy, it’s presents, futures.”
Amongst all of it is Deadletter’s deadliest weapon: the saxophone of Poppy Richler. At occasions she appears to be locked in a duel with Sam Jones and Will King’s guitars; in others, the three mix in some terrifying axis of energy. Richler’s elements ignite and catalyse ‘It Flies’ and ‘Hysterical Power’, which owe a sonic debt to The Comet Is Coming, whereas on ‘Mom’, the sax provides a way of thriller, verging on menace – not removed from the paranoid temper of Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’.
And there it’s once more, the tangle of juxtapositions that makes Deadletter such an intriguing new addition to the Brixton Windmill period of post-punk. ‘Hysterical Power’ is darkish and foreboding and it’s irresistible and enjoyable. It confronts the each day battle of our shared society and forces us to smile about it. Deadletter may solely be getting began, however with a document as achieved as ‘Hysterical Power’, it already appears like they’ve been right here for fairly some time.
Particulars
- Launch date: September 13, 2024
- Document label: SO Recordings