No healing in this Sex - 9 o'clock turn up their Nasty

 

My many spats and fall-outs with the self-obsessed and yet almost talented rock-art avengers 9 o'clock Nasty are a matter of record. I can always find something to like in their music and I look forward to the time each month where they bring a preview of their next release to my home and expect my approval. When I met them they were wannabee freak-punks with a cool name and big ideas and I was an established print-journalist fallen on hard times. Now I eat through a straw and they sit at the end of my bed and indulge me.

Yet.

Facts first. Sex is the second release by the band this year. Politic was by far the best thing they have done to date and I understand they have had more than ten times as many plays for it as all their earlier material, and the pile of unsold CDs from their house has now cleared as people hearing the thunderous fuckoff of King Thing decided to hear more. It is a good CD by the way. I like it, I think they try too hard to be too many things, they lack persistence and prize energy and output over focus. I have listened to their upcoming bhangra dance-hall crossover and I think it is good, but they should start a new band with a new name and release it as that. I want to know what 9 o'clock Nasty are. Well with the last EP they told me. 

Relentless, brutal and poetic, they mapped out a genuine fusion of garage punk and a dancefloor sensibility that made a real statement.

So what next? I needed to put the new EP to the test. Have they kept their focus?

The theme is sex, but not the sex-act, rather the power, wistful desire and ego of sex. The side eyed treatment without compromise is a feature of their work and lyrically it is delivered in a heavy dose. "I've made a start on a broken heart, and I don't know what happens next" they sing with the ego of someone that has never felt that loss before, and simply does not have the toolkit to deal with the pain of it without making a fucking song about it.

Oh but what a song. Do Me Too is anchored by a driving bassline and swirls with guitars and a chorus that tells a story and makes you feel. You can rock around the room to this music, or you can lean back and sigh. It is all there. What Have You Done For Me Lately? picks up where King Thing left off. They blend the utterly obvious with the compellingly original. 

So far, so consistent. Two songs with a theme, a common musical DNA and real impact. Of course they cannot make it three from three. Indoor Boyfriend is an oddity. Of course it is, this is 9 o'clock Nasty. As I understand it, the lyrics are almost word for word a conversation the band enjoyed with "the most attractive man ever made" at a party. It must have been a freakshow party. It hits a gentle sway, a groove and it does not let it go. It slips in your ear and it clings and dig and digs into your brain. One part 1950s film, eight parts mainstream pop and one part insane anarchy it will be the stand out song for some listeners, and be the strange "what the fuck?" for others. What I like though is that 9 o'clock Nasty continue to throw in a hand-grenade of strange at the end of every EP, but rather than the shambolic creature thrashing on the floor of What Time Is Nasty? here we have a well crafted and beautiful little song, that just happens to be on the edge of psychosis.

Bravo.

They are cackling about something called "Dick Pics" which I guess is the next release. I have never known people spend more time laughing at their own jokes than this band, but they are funny, and this is an even better record than the last one.