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Rhodes, "War Day"
Swim releases are always worth a shot, so after being a bit surprised that Colin Newman was releasing a single by a band who sounded on the surface to be some kind of reversion to punk rock '77, I decided to try it anyway and see if it didn't grow in. This was a good idea, as I'd heard compressed radio broadcasts of Rhodes prior to hearing the single, and some of the raw powerhouse energy had been shorn away.
 
Colin's always been a big fan of process and this is why he liked Rhodes, a rock band born in a computer. He reckons that soon a lot more rock bands are going to be building tracks on computers from digitized building blocks, discrete chunks of recorded sound reconfigured furiously. Although this isn't nearly as distinctive as Wire's 'Read and Burn' EPs, it has a similar juggernaut crunch. "War Day" is a grimly appropriate a title for a song today, considering the idiotic destabilizing Middle Eastern situation, and the song rips, shreds and burns with a swagger not a million miles from the Saints second classic album 'Eternally Yours.' Despite a cocky attitude, the vocals are fairly weak and nondescript but that's not such a problem with a hotblooded ascending guitar riff driving the song to destruction. The computer also fuels ultraheavy crushing drum precision. On the flipside, 'The New' sounds like some long lost out-take from the Adverts first album, reshined and honed in widescreen moderninity. Rhodes deliver two quick blasts that leave me curious to see if they can transcend their influences when album time comes, because they've taken root in a killer sound bristling with needle-in-the-red digital distortion overload and it'd be a shame if something fresher didn't grow there.
