REVIEW: Big Ups – Eighteen Hours of Static

We’re delighted to have Jamie Murphy join the writing team at CV. He reviews Eighteen Hours of Static by Big Ups as his first contribution.

Big Ups’ ‘Eighteen Hours of Static’ is an album that came out earlier this year in January and has since been lauded by most of the major online music press. Their leading single from the album ‘Goes Black‘ was even released late enough last year for it to sneak its way onto a few “Best of 2013” lists, despite it creeping in through back door, just as the countdown for the new year started. So, I feel that by writing up anything at this stage is either like rocking up late to the party, or it just makes it look like it takes me half a year to knock out 500-ish words, about how much I love this (now) critically acclaimed band, who make music I’m known to love anyway.

But do you know what, I’m bloody well gonna do it anyway, and if you aren’t convinced of how just goddamn awesome they are – but are still reading at this point – listen up (with your eyes) foo’!

So, they’re from Brooklyn and they make this frenetic and diverse neo post-hardcore (read as “punk” for less pretention). They manage to both combine the youthful and visceral energy of hardcore classics like Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat and Keith Morris era Black Flag with the more cerebral and contemplative post-hardcore of Fugazi, Big Black, and the later 80’s Black Flag. These two forms come across on the album and at their best, they combine the two styles, swerving to-and-fro in sonic murmurations.

One of the most bold and obvious examples of this is at the end of ‘Wool’: a song that starts off with a guitar riff which sounds like a refrain from an XX song. This innocuous guitar riff enables the rhythm section to lock together a brilliant sense of shape and space. The vocals, empathetic and monotonous, craft this hypnotic sense of detachment and ennui, – with an almost nursery rhyme-like simplistic word play.

This, as well as the feeling created by the song’s length (being the longest on the album at over 4 minutes, when most are 1 or 2), you are sucked in and calmly lead astray, in order for you to be thrown over the top at the end. A searing pay-off that erupts from nowhere, the guitar rises up like a wall and the rhythm section go into overdrive – all anger, sweat and power chords.

Other notable moments, for the most mosh-pit minded come in the form of quiet/ loud pastiche offering ‘Goes Black‘, ‘Disposer‘ and ‘Justice‘. The latter owing a debt to pop punk, as it somehow combines sounds of the sunny L.A. bands of the last decade and the dark nihilistic bands of D.C. in the 80s – the bridge’s bass line being especially Mark Hoppus-esque. In between these, lay a mixture of styles and juxtapositions, from sludge and thrash to the melodic and dissonant.

These are some of the things that make Eighteen Hours of Static such an enjoyable listen, for anyone who is nerdy fan of rock music. This melting pot of styles and influences is a validation for the ever-evolving spirit and influence of that amorphous noise called “punk”.