Much like the air conditioning systems in planes, the music industry relies of recycling. Trends and sounds are recombined, recirculated, and in the long haul, things can start to seem a little stale. The summer of 2007 is one of those times: the swaggering lad-rock of Kasabian and their ilk is being followed by the unheralded revival of shoegazing, in the form of the SpiritualizedandMyBloodyValentine-obsessedlikesofMapsandretro- flavoured Americans The Ponys.
Even Ride are reforming, despite their linchpin Andy Bell now being a permanent member of Oasis. Bar a few honourable,brilliantexceptions, shoegazing didn't fully take off first time round because, well, it was mostly middle-class,home-countiesboys staring at their battered trainers and stepping on effects pedals.
On the other hand, lad rock - and, in the case of The Twang, its 1990s incarnation, Madchester - is an easy sell: it prides personality and hedonism over more cerebral pursuits, and it's more fun in a summer field of mud. It has choruses, rather than 10-minute freakouts. It's basic and it's primal and, though it might beat you up after six pints of Stella, it would insist on being your mate afterwards.
The Twang are five 20-somethings from the heart of Birmingham, each with a face like a bunch of knuckles, and the attitude to match. They don't just sing about blowing their wages at the weekend, or fistfights with the neighbours - they have lived the life. How many other bands have a member who was once arrested for chasing a bunch ofrockersdownhisstreetwitha samurai sword (as The Twang's bassist, Jon Watkin, did)?
The period which Love It When I Feel Like This mines is the baggy years of the late 1980s and early 90s, and they stick doggedly to its sound: shufflingbeats,echoing,high-register guitar lines which ape both U2 and the HappyMondays,andbeery machismo. If all this sounds like a throwback, then, well, it is, but consider this: the majority of the fans going wild at Twang shows are too young to have experienced this music first hand, first time around.
The Twang's reference points are now part of the musical canon. While hipsters of a certain age might fondly think back to the heyday of Flowered Up, the baggy scene is not a living memory for anyone under 25. The Twang's album absorbs these influences, but includes contemporary references. Songsarefullof"geezerslooking scary" and nights where "it's going off". Lead singer Phil Etheridge talks about "getting f***ed" and, on closing track Cloudy Room, getting "some Gianluca" - rhyming slang for cocaine.
There'ssomeofthecomedown blues of fellow Brummie Mike Skinner of The Streets but the main focus is on partying: Cloudy Room and the manic Don't Wait Up are so wired they practically dilate your pupils on their own. The Neighbour, meanwhile, relates the story of a house party being interrupted by a furious neighbour, and features a chant of "just do one".
When Push The Ghosts lifts the melody from Salt-N-Pepa's Push It for a bassline, it seems like a weird intrusion of the feminine, as does the middle eight of Loosely Dancing, which comes straight from Cindi Lauper's Time After Time. The result is so bizarre you assume there's been a mix-upatthepressingplant.Such moments aside, this is an album which is calculatedly made for a specific audience, namely, the kind of people The Twang were before a major record label rolled a truckload of money their way. It is an album of uncomplicated pleasures: a nostalgia trip for those old enough to still own a worn Happy Mondays T-shirt, and a slice of musical time travel for their younger brothers.
Recommended download: Cloudy Room
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