| · Like The Strokes if their albums didn’t sound so shitty.
As much as I would love to turn this review into a tirade against the so-called rock revival – I seem to recall a band called Railroad Jerk who were making shit-hot blues-based rock all through the ’90s – Tangiers deserve more than that.
When they released their full-length debut, Hot New Spirits, last year, it was a slipshod, ramshackle Canuck interpretation of the British invasion (and I mean that in the best way possible). They yelped their way through a dozen pressurized, hook-heavy numbers with innocence and abandon. The members of Tangiers were Toronto rock-scene vets and their scraped-raw sound was immediate and powerful.
Their followup Never Bring You Pleasure features a slightly modified lineup and a more refined sound, but sadly the energy of their debut gets lost in the redesign. To the band’s credit, the vocals on this release are far stronger than in the past – Josh Reichmann and James Sayce achieve an almost Joel Plasket charm, swinging from mid-range croon to shameless falsetto – but musically they lose their contemporary edge. The band is considerably tighter on this release, but despite the bus-ride jerk of the guitars, Never Bring You Pleasure lacks the manic urgency that made Hot New Spirits so compelling. Still you can’t argue with a song like "I Wanna Go Out" which makes as good a point for the revival of rock as you are ever likely to hear.
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