Surviving the twenties requires a few different personal characteristics, from ignoring the news cycle to an ability to sniff out the truth from amongst the corporate PR bullshit. Also on the list is being able to have a sense of perspective, a quality that Manchester based Chemtrails use to great effect on The Joy of Sects.
Their fourth album, it’s the first not to be recorded DIY style and was produced by Margo Broom, whose previous clients include Fat White Family and Big Joanie. Not that pivoting towards normality has taken much of an edge off their sound; a chaotic smorgasbord of post-punk, trashy pop, surf and 60’s girl bands, it’s an aesthetic which flirts most with that of the B-52’s, bolstered with a now-you’re-up-to-date type snark.
Music for your ironic friends to sit round and listen to ironically? Well, not really. It’s far too unpretentious for that, as opener Detritus Andronicus and the cherry bomb fuzz of Join Our Death Cult demonstrate. In what’s becoming a dominant theme of the perma-shit meta current outfall the lyrics are often a far darker construct than the music, but how you take The Joy of Sects, especially tracks like the rad-disco scrawl of Superhuman Superhighway, is entirely down to how you how you use the tools you’ve got, just the same as for everything else.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 