Out Of The Angeles

For those past the first flush of youth, the sophomore offering from Amusement Parks On Fire can beg but one question - what’s wrong with youngsters today? Rock may be a young man or woman’s game, but Nottingham’s Michael Feerick is surely pushing the point to extremes. At the tender age of 17, he played every note of every instrument on his DIY debut, quickly attracting such distinguished champions as Bob Mould and US alt.zine Filter (who acquired distribution rights for the US). Now, aged 20, it’s practically impossible to listen to Feerick’s second album Out Of The Angeles without thinking of Loveless. But while Kevin Shield’s magnum opus required three years and a quarter of a million pounds’ worth of intricate tinkering from 18 engineers, Mr. Feerick has fashioned his sound in Sigur Ros’ suitably glacial converted swimming pool studio outside Reykjavik. It’s all of the grandeur at low, Icelandic prices. You know the drill. Vocals float up as if from shallow graves, muffled beneath spidery strings, furious fretwork and grandly soaring guitar feedback that subsists, like the Worm Ouroboros, on itself. Enraptured by the trip-rock of Spiritualized, ‘Cut To Future Shock’, the album’s 14-minute denouement, is Music To Plummet Through Clouds To. If anything, it’s a little overdressed. Tracks like ‘The Ramones Book’ and ‘Venus In Caner’ suggest a Dave Grohl songsmith lurks beneath the sonorous fracas. Still, this is a fine maelstrom of bedroom window rock. Godspeed You Young Whippersnapper...