Search - Seafood :: Surviving the Quiet

'And they'll always take the easy path'

Second Fig | Co. Durham, UK | 09/04/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I first got into seafood because they kept on being called th british sonic youth and as a huge sonic youth fan i thought i'd give them a try. The sonic youth influence is plain, in the squealing guitars, use of distortion and feedback and in the often meandering tunes the guitars make but there a lot more to seafood than a liking for distortion. Tracks like Guntrip and Folk Song Crisis are great rock songs, loud guitars, shouted lyrics, loud quiet harmonics and the slightly skewed guitars that seafood share with sonic youth et al. But on tracks like Beware Design, Belt, Toggle and Led By Bison they seem to share more with bands like Belle & Sebastien and Terror Twilight era Pavement. Beware design in prticular is a bittersweet gem of a tune, a frail sugary melody sung almost childlike by David (vox+gtr) and caroline (drms+vox) and then there are the songs like 'this is not an exit' which falls somewhere between, an almost poppy tune at times with skewed guitar and shouted chorus. They've straightened their path a bit since their mini-lp 'messenger in the camp', they don't get lost down dead end paths of guitar fiddling any more, they're on the easy path and as long as they don't get complacent...they might be giants."