Oil: Electric Tongue EP

Having spent the past six years since their inception ripening their ear-pricking garage-rock formula Dutch quintet Oil finally appear to have evolved into a band capable of reclaiming the territory stolen by the more commercial NME-hugging, designer-barnetted vagabonds currently polluting the garage waters.

It’s a raw hybrid of sorts that rides bareback over the likes of Drive Like Jehu and Ian Mackayes Embrace while all their weight is propped up on a musicianship that fuses a beautifully mercurial partnership between their two guitarists. But while their roughened edge appears to have been smoothed out somewhat there are still some wonderful chord progressions that tread that fine garage-rock line between dissonance and melody - which just about saves this EP from being filed under the throwaway heard-it-all-before section.

While not entirely life-changing this is still an authentic, raw blast through some earnest underground garage sounds.