Fresh from the tea-and-cake Field Day festival, The Rumble Strips summon the sound of a good-time drinking band. There’s lots of clapping, honky-tonk Motown piano, acoustic guitar and repetitive chorus lyrics going, “There’s plenty of girls and boys in love”. All of this packed into two-and-a-half minutes: is it long enough to get you to break your conversation and dance on the pub tables?
Well, let’s consider the image. What of all these photos they’ve produced with them posing with saxophones and trumpets? Well, there is not much evidence here to prove they can actually play non-traditional rock instruments. Just a cute publicity stunt, then. And the frontman? It’s singer Charlie Wailer that gives us uplifting wholesome English vocals, enough to be the hundreds-and-thousands-covered icing on this fairy cake of a song. Should this song come on the pub jukebox, dancing and merriment will ensue.
But just not long enough for toes on tables.
actually
they do play trumpet and saxophone
actually.
yes indeed they can -
to great effect on my oh my.
Bab bab-ba ba bab-bab bababab ...
As indeed
they have on everything they've ever recorded apart from this single. There's background research at work.
stupid fucking review
yes they do play brass. jesus.
DiS
I'm not a Rumble Strips fan myself, but this isn't the first time DiS have slipped into lazy and inaccurate journalism for a review, especially lately. First there was the live review of Animal Collective which suggested they had played various songs on from their new album (which they didn't). Then there was the heavily ironic Don't Look Back Slint review which spent a lot of time suggesting that many people at the gig didn't know anything about Slint, before mistaking the final song as an early one when it was a new one. There was the shoddy "interview" with the Field Day promoter in which he claimed 'backstage was great' and seemingly got away with it, glazing over the fact the sound quality on all stages was DREADFUL.
I won't complain about the Sonic Youth live review being lazy or inaccurate but it was pretty pretentious - it was a nice try, but failed horribly in the end. Sure we should welcome creativity in reviews but not to the exent that it drowns out the music.
Hopefully I'm just nit-picking and these errors are just blips, but I couldn't see a DiS of 3 years ago doing the same kind of thing. It pains me to say it, but it seems as if some people at DiS are making the mistake of thinking they are more important than the music.
Well aren't you brilliant
Go start a website and trump us already.
Considering the thousands of articles that I read through on this site - picking through where I can to do away with mistakes (bear in mind I can't be at every reviewed show, nor can I hear every single reviewed) - if you can only think of three pieces where something's been a little wide of the mark, well that's fine by me.
Much better hit rate than our competitors, put it that way. The DiS of three years ago was riddled with many errors - not just factual ones - and the writing team wasn't half as good as it is today.
Of course, you're entitled to disagree.
oh
And, you Mike, are of course not entitled to agree with any criticism of the site.
You won't catch me complaining though. This is probably my no.1 source of music news and reviews. It shows NME.com up for the immature hype machine that it is.
Curious
Weren't the Rumble Strips at the Underage Festival, not Field Day?
Alex doesn't like the Rumble Strips
Alex, if you can say this:
"Well, let’s consider the image. What of all these photos they’ve produced with them posing with saxophones and trumpets? Well, there is not much evidence here to prove they can actually play non-traditional rock instruments. Just a cute publicity stunt, then."
I agree, photographs do not prove that the holders of the instruments can necessarily play them, which is why you have to LISTEN to them as well before making crass and unsubstantiated comments of the type above.
It is quite obvious that you haven't listened to them before, because if you had, there is no way you could have made a comment like that.
"Girls and Boys in Love" has no brass in it, and for me that says that you have never listened to any other Strips track before. Your credibility I am afraid is shot, mate!