The Muslims

“If you give me a gun
I’ll point it at you”

Extinction




John Peel once said that he preferred the bands that “say no to life”. He’d have loved San Diego’s Muslims, whose solipsism means they hate everyone and say no to everything. “I don’t want it/I don’t care/Whatever you’re selling” (On My Time); “Why don’t you all just call it a day/You try so hard doing what you’re told” (Call It A Day); and, perhaps best of all, the slating of over-hyped bands and the lonely folks that hype them: “Everybody’s talking but they’re not saying anything at all/Yeah, what’s that you say/Don’t let it go to your head, that’s all/Everybody wants to be in the know/Everybody wants somewhere to go/Everybody wants something to do tonight” (Future Rock).

For the sleeve of their invigorating, eponymous 7-track mini-album, The Muslims’ label boss got his dad’s mate, a former cop, to shoot police bullets at the plain white sleeves. Like The White Album, then, only cheaper and dirtier and shorter, and with the benefit of The Modern Lovers’ driving drone, The Stooges’ barrelling blitz, The Stones’ trebly rebellion and The New York Dolls’ sneer for inspiration.

There are traces of The Fall’s bile and The Clean’s primitive garage jangle in The Muslims, too, but for anyone wanting The Modern Lovers’ Longbranch Saloon sound, this will meet all your needs.