Yes, I know its 2022 now, and I’ll start to be inundated with new releases (my inbox has already started pinging…) but I still have several albums I want to cover from last year…including this belter from The Scaramanga Six.
Worthless Music may well be the title of this, the tenth, album from The Scaramanga Six but that’s where that comparison ends, this is a thunderously good collection of powerfully strident hard-edged, while sophistically artfully concocted, post punk anthems. Certainly nothing worthless here, no weak links and plenty of compelling melodies.
The band announce their arrival with the blistering defiance of Big Ideas, big on beats, big on rhythm, big on melodies, big on striking song structure. This epic opener is a statement of intent for the rest of the album, a sign of things to come, the sound is huge, like the sound of coming thunder. Be under no illusion, you are in for a thrill ride of power chords, tumultuous beats, a booming vibrancy with a deep rumbling resonance.
There is a certain affinity with other stalwarts of the punk/post punk scene such as bands like The Cravats, not purely in the sound, but in the enigmatic nature of many of the song lyrics. Undoubtedly there is also something in the surname Morricone too, with a sweeping cinematic architecture to many of the songs here, none more so on the highly effective (and affecting) Boy, a film soundtrack if ever I heard one, with such heartfelt lyrics. Certainly one of the album highlights for me.
If I started to list the highlights of the album, I’d end up just starting to list all fourteen songs on the album. Every song has it’s own USPs, while as a whole the album comes together as a fully cohesive piece.
Take the full-on sinister apocalyptic galloping rhythm and nightmarish imagery of Horse with No Face, balance that with the aforementioned cinematic torch-song feel of Boy, with a certain vocal quality that verges on the Scott Walker (and again on the album closer Then I Met Joanna) or the hypnotic sound of dystopia that is Cults, Stranger in Your Own Mind that recalls Adam and the Ants in its opening tribal yells before opening up into another vast weeping arrangement that could grace any blockbuster perfectly.
All these songs unique in their own way, all stamping their own personality on the album but, as a whole gelling seamlessly, demonstrating the indisputable sound of The Scaramanga Six and in doing so creating one of those all killer no filler” albums.