While it’s not the pearly new album half the UK’s underground is clamouring to hear, STC:CE is the perfect stopgap from England’s best new band. Not just in the punk world, y’see, but the most excitingly vital bunch of musicians to have reared their ugly heads in the last…oooh, when was it Kaiser Chiefs ‘broke through’?
And even though the majority of tracks on offer here are familiar, they’ve now worked themselves up to the status of old friends. The bomb dropping to announce ‘Blood For Oil’s imminent assault on your ears, the strains of ‘Funky Kingston’ dissolving into ‘Monkey See Monkey Do’, the quotable intro from ‘The Rape of Punk To Come’: all instantly recognisable yet never slipping into predictability or outstaying their welcome. Then there’s the superold tunes from their demo, delightful in their rawness yet still relevant enough to merit inclusion. See how ‘SB6’ mutated into ‘The Rape of Punk To Come’ without losing its original verve, and check out live staple ‘Northern Skies’, finally available to hear (unless you have that old DtD sampler or, of course, the original demo). In short, STC allows you to track the Boom’s progress thus far, nicely rounding off this part of their inevitable trajectory upwards. Then chuck in three dub remixes – not quite as essential as the originals but they just show of SB6’s willingness to fuck with genre – and a startlingly good acoustic track (from the Babyboom project, which is streets ahead of most bands’ main efforts) and you have a superb package.
One thing is immediately obvious when listening to STC. While most bands struggle with perfecting one particular style of music, SB6’s gloriously assimilated clusterfuck of all things danceable is musical audacity at its best. Who gave this bunch the right to be this proficient at paying homage while setting out their stall aggressively enough to cement their own identity, and rightfully so? If you haven’t encountered SB6 yet then this is the perfect introduction, and if you have just grab onto this and wait for them to explode.
Ben
www.sonicboomsix.co.uk
www.moonskaeurope.com