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THE GRIT
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The title track may be totally true but doesn’t stop The Grit being a purely enjoyable, tuneful rampage that blasts ice outta the wind to freeze the stale wannabe punkers, leaving ‘em by the wayside covered in their own gob. Immensely likeable and infectious punch-drunk slam-dunking sing-a-longs wrapped in a brutal onslaught but, as is surprisingly rare, this is mainly because apart from writing damned good dram draining songs they’re obviously having one hell of a time. Add to their believability and honesty no need for pathetic punk posturings and anodyne anarchy - a band who’d kill Motorheads tour bus if they supported ‘em... ‘Fear And Consumption’ (aptly with their weathered voices) melds Stray Cat countrybilly with an industrial landslide stomp and swing. I see in my crystal ball a video with ‘em driving a juggernaut across Texas juxtaposing cactus sharp ranch hound boogie with oil-drilling slap-bass and classy sunset melodies that’d slice limes for your tequila. ‘Accosted’, the most Clash-tastic song here, a crunchy stir-fry of ‘Clampdown’, ‘London Burning’ and ‘Police and Thieves’ suggests again shelf-life beyond the confines and hairsprayed horizons of Psychobilly support slots.
Alongside
Black Fiction’s ‘Groupies For Jesus’,
pretty much essential. |
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-Stu Gibson |
In strict
Rock’n’Roll terms, or PunknFucknRoll as they have it, The Grit
are about the most exciting bunch of rancid reprobates around. Nicking
a cement mixer from a construction site building city centre flats fer
twats they churned up choice slabs of The Clash, Rancid and fellow
Tyneside terrors Ginger and Danny Wildheart with an almost inherent knack
of old country that suggests a thousand Tuesdays smoking their Dad’s tabs
and swilling cider round the back of workingmens clubs laughing at what
the old guys are listening to never knowing that a few years later it’ll
be good ammunition to take to old London town as it helps set ‘em apart
from the prevalent Psychobilly puritanism. CD closer and closing time tale
‘Whoever You Are’ is a masterpiece of Merle Haggard in a
Romero film chomping on the immortal remains of Johnny Paycheck that’d
make the Supersuckers put their boots on backwards, shit beans, belch
donkey droppings and demand of Blair that it replaces ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on
New Year.