[engl] Debut LP from the Nottingham, funked up post punkers after their debut 7" on Erste Theke Tontrager. Keep an ear tuned to the underground and it’s odds on you’ll hear some pretty fearsome rumblings. Point your ears in the direction of Nottingham and you’ll find the righteous blast of Slumb Party – a post-punk-skronk party of such hip-gyrating magnitude they’ll make you wanna take a bulldozer to your nearest nightclub and pull shapes on the ruins. Their debut 7” dropped earlier this year via German label Erste Theke Tontraeger, and with this debut LP following so shortly afterwards, you should have a good idea of their natural pace. Fittingly, songs are concise and snappy, with flashes of everything from the rhythms of 80s Athens, GA (Pylon, early B-52s), the soul/punk hybrid of both The Nation of Ulysses and The Make-Up, the hyper-whacked sax rush of the Contortions… plus yer Minutemen, yer Gang Of Fours, yer Shoppings, yer favourite bands with attitude and heads so full of ideas you’ll find yourself wondering why most bands fail to make a sassy combination of arts and smarts sound this fkn essential. Happy Now is the title of the album, as the band ponder everything from day jobs to the passing of time with an existential fury that’s too clever to be anything other than caustic. It’s not a case of ‘how are this band so good’ as ‘who knew anything could be this good?’ One of the best records you’ll hear this year, but you already figured that out. BRB, just quitting my job to follow ‘em round on the road forever.

[engl] First UK band on ETT and they making fresh, fiery, and eminently danceable music! SLUMB PARTY are awesome! They just have such a cool vibe... they're overtly arty, but also have this kind of approachability about them as well, rather than something like the more detached art school aesthetic of Gang of Four or Wire. More to the point, they wrote simply incredible songs that combined the power of punk rock with the earworm quality of psychodelic children's songs. As one might expect from this kind of self-consciously artsy music, it is forward-pushing in a way that puts them in stark contrast to today's retro-oriented bands. Of course you can hear strains of various quirky, feminist punk from the Slits to the Raincoats to various other Rough Trade bands and beyond, but this is also heavy and raw in a way that would really only make sense in the year 2017. It's a brilliant EP that will take a little bit of unpacking to make sense of, but there's so much here... and most gratifyingly of all, it gives you the sense of punk actually moving forward. SLUMB PARTY sound like the future erupting out of all your favourite DIY punk 7”s simultaneously. There’s the infectious momentum of Essential Logic driving things ever forward, the arty minimalism of Lilliput underscoring the band’s lyrical subject matter. SLUMB PARTY use all these lightning rods as jumping on points to hurtle us all into a new dimension very much of their own making. This upsurge of energy and vision has now been skillfully captured on the band’s debut EP. The EP is basically everything that I want punk to be. I guess you can draw comparisons with any number of minimal, aggressive bands femenist bands of today (anything from THE WORLD to DOWNTOWN BOYS to PRIMETIME to FRAU to PRIESTS and more), but SLUMB PARTY are truly their own beast. Listening to this is like happening upon some raw, undiscovered European lady- freak punk gem from early 80s Europe, and if you treasure records of that ilk you NEED this like you need few other modern records. Utterly essential and highly recommended.

[engl] Second LP from Slumb Party, Nottinghams finest Post Punkers. First LP is long gone, don't sleep. Everyone’s favourite herky-jerky Nottingham noiseniks Slumb Party return to blow minds once more. Maybe it’s time you polished all the hard surfaces in your house and strapped on your dancing shoes, cuz once this one lands on your stereo you’re gonna be pulling shapes and bouncing from the floor to the walls and back again. Last time round their influences were clear: James Chance, Minutemen and Gang Of Four rose to the surface in a heady concoction of skronking, sax-drenched post-punk and addictively wonky hooks. This time they’re no less deliciously addictive, but the pop factor rides higher in the mix, at the cost of precisely none of their aching smarts or visceral thrill. A wheezing synth powers opener Go To Work, with nods to the same heroes as before, but also a sense of Attractions-style powerpop appeal – if XTC had ever attempted to refract pub rock through their angular prism while shouting ‘CAN YOU BUY ME A PINT’, it might have felt something like this. Sound good? Of course it fucking does, and it sets the tone for the rest of the album. While their 2017 debut (and if you slept on that masterpiece, then what are you waiting for, dummy?) dealt with working a day job and dealing with getting older, here the world weighs even more heavily on their shoulders. The snarling fury that characterised those songs is transposed to an exhausted rage that’s no less bilious or righteous – being skint, the overwhelming vacuum of ‘creative’ culture, and the general nature of just existing in 2019 all come under the microscope. No spoilers, but turns out all those things are bad; luckily they’re soundtracked and documented by a band that’s (whisper it) maturing (nah, fuck it, shout it: MATURING) into something far greater than the sum of their influences, that simply explodes from the speakers and demands your time. Like Molotov cocktails and lit matches, this is gonna seem daunting to swallow in one go, but the resultant explosion is messy and spectacular. Slumb Party describe this record as their ‘new/no wavey post punk power pop effort’, and that’s a pretty accurate summary: certainly, there’s a Stiff Records/Marked Men undercurrent to all those geometrical puzzles that make up their songs. Leave it to us, though, and we’ll just call it ‘one of the most essential records to emerge from the UK underground this year’. Or order you to drop everything and listen right now. ‘Spending Money’ is a keeper, alright. Will Fitzpatrick.