HUNCHES : “FUCK DISCO BEATS” 7”EP....Hey, I hate fucking disco too! Wow! The “burnouts” in my junior high had this to say, and it still rings true twenty-some-odd years later: “AC/DC, rock and roll, disco sucks and so does soul”. Exceptionally well put. So as a disco protest, this recent 45 from THE HUNCHES is going to fall on a lot of deaf ears & cause a whole bunch more, but truth be told, it’s a pretty weak title track. Subject matter’s completely uninteresting, and it’s a middleweight screamer from a band who are better when they break the mold a little bit. In fact this time they’re ALL screamers – “When I Became You” is a solid garage-fortified pounder from the new CD, and “Jakob’s Voices”, the standalone b-side, is the not-even-close winner, easily one of the best things they’ve done. I’m tempted to compare this one, particularly the hot B-side, to SCRATCH ACID circa “Berzerker”, which was when that band really flew off the rails and whose brand of uneasy listening became something a little more dangerous than we’d ever heard before. I really dig The Hunches and am going to be patient when they make the inevitable rookie mistakes, because they’ve got a great god-given ability to harness a lot of raw voltage and pent-up teenage lust and let it loose in a wildly creative, locomotive and sometimes even pleasurably bent manner. Not a lot of bands with the ability to sound this full-on nasty these days.

posted by Jay H. at 6:43 AM