At the turn of the millenium, Bigwig sort of imploded. Fortunately Bigwig are still going and recently reclaimed their double-time dominance with the awesome ‘Reclamation’. Sweet. The other fortunate outcome is the two jettisoned band members went on to form Near Miss. They released their first record ‘The Gentle Art of Making Enemies’ in 2002 on Fearless. I think it sold about six copies, of which I bought two, and the artwork looked like it had been cobbled together on a word processor and printed at home.
However it was a great pop punk record, despite it’s aesthetic failings. I was very pleased to see ‘Testing the Ends’ landing on my desk because Near Miss really had the potential to achieve greatness on their sophomore release. On first listen it’s still undoubtedly the same band and there are some clear Bigwiggish influences there, like there was on ‘..Making Enemies’. It’s a great deal more varied this time around though, the skatepunk sound has been scaled back on a major level and we’ve got ballads, less hardcore, less fast shredding, more melody and less showing off really.
It works too; opener ‘Serious Mess’ has some weird production ticks at it’s start and middle but is still a ballgrabbing, monstrous riff with a great chorus (the melodies sound like Kerbdog, if anyone remembers them). ‘Call for Help’ relieves the skatepunk fanboy in you with it’s hyper drum intro and driving double-time sound. Then it gets poppier, then slower, then faster, then a bit reflective (Take It Back), then starts to sound a bit like Over It and then gets back to speedily picked riffs and tech punk rock done well.
It’s an interesting collection of work, and less coherent as a package than ‘..Making Enemies’, but at the same time it’s nice to see all the types of songs, Near Miss are capable of. They’re all catchy and flawlessly played. This is one for fans of Bigwig and Over It, so seek it out.
Takeover Records
www.nearmissmusic.com
Si