You know that you are in good company when, even on the first pass of the song, you pick up on one, perhaps two Smiths, a couple of Sisters of Mercy, and also a Joy Division reference. Especially when you weren’t really listening out for them. And they are there for good reason. Rather than many bands that throw around such touchstones just to seem cool, Def Nettle pays sonic tributes to those bands through its music, too.
(Ahh, Atmosphere, another point to the JD’s.)
Over low-slung, brooding bass lines and spacious guitars, precise beats and world weary vocals “Mohawk” echos that very specific moment when the more discerning post-punk bands were turning onto the US dancefloor scene, juxtapositioning the sort of sonic revelations and revolutions that must have been going through New Order’s acid adled brains as they swapped their raincoats for polo shirts and hit the floor of New York’s Danceteria!
And at four minutes, there is plenty of room to play, so we also get dense gothic textures and synth tones, rapped interludes, atmospheric lulls, and sonic crescendos. It’s the sound of a Manchester winter getting to play in the New York summer sun!
“Mohawk” is perhaps more the sound of 1982, as if it were happening now. A post-punk collision that never quite happened – the sound of pre-album Sisters making it big in the big apple, The Smiths turning goth, The March Violets inventing the New Romantic sound, (I’m just throwing stuff around at this point, but it makes you think, right?) all soaked in the poise and polish of the modern studio.
What ifs are a lot of fun, alternative musical time lines playing out in the imagination. But as much as I have banged on about history going down a different trouser-leg of time, what Def Nettle does so well is shuffle its old vinyl collection into something that is both brilliantly fresh but also wonderfully familiar.
Website
Facebook
Bandcamp
YouTube
Instagram
