Manhattan Love Suicides

Rejoice! Ring out the bells! The Manhattan Love Suicides album is out on vinyl, courtesy of those fine folk at Squirrel Records.

MLS probably have blood in their bathtub, slime running down their walls, use a severed foot as a doorstop and if they came to your house party they’d be the last to leave, the bins would be emptied and your dog impregnated, but in the howling gale of noise and the blistering fuzz guitar there’s the sweetest noise.

They say they like the Shop Assistants and you can hear Safety Net’s DNA stamped all over this album; similarly, they dig Galaxie 500 (like, who doesn’t?); The Fizzbombs – now tell me you can’t hear Sign On The Line’s rampant, boundless, fuzzed-up energy in these songs; and Beat Happening, whose naïve, straightforward simplicity they take a cue from, even covering that band's Indian Summer.

After all that, the closest touchstones are The Jesus and Mary Chain’s unholy blend of whiplash guitars playing Brill Building pop and the Velvet Underground’s feral, deadbeat, nocturnal noise.

In fact, they say they like “all the good stuff” and it certainly sounds like it, but we’ll have to bring them up on numbering “The Fat Tulips” in their list of good influences. They are not good and no amount of Chinese water torture or strapping electrodes to my bollocks and frying them at high voltage will get me to say otherwise.

The vinyl version of the album has two extra tracks – ain’t that sweet for all us vinyl lovers – the first of which, Wolves, starts the album by using – well, of course – the Be My Baby drumbeat. It then goes on to “borrow” “substantially” from Neil Young’s After The Goldrush. Along with Fugu ripping off Til The Morning Comes (oh yeah, St Etienne covered Only Love Can Break Your Heart 17 years ago, making them ahead of the pack) maybe now is the time that Young’s album gets the recognition as one of the very finest. Or there’s just a very long-comin’ tribute album in the works.