ANXIETY – MLP

ANXIETY – MLP (2016)

Anxiety’s first record is a welcome shot of druggy weirdness, crammed with twitching arty dance opportunities, thick coats of huffable reverb, and maniac punk freakouts. The bass shoulders most of the rhythm grunt work, which gives the shrill guitar permission to dislodge piles of feedback scree and tinker with creepy effects instead, going gleefully and sadistically overboard at every opportunity. The best tracks are when they surge faster in to a mashup of proto and post hardcore, best exemplified by ‘Sewer In My Head’, which sounds like a surf band trying to write a D-Clone song (or the other way round), or ‘Human Hell’, a loathing back-and-forth speedy number that finishes with space-age whooshes. ‘The Worst’ is perversely bouncy and good fun in spite of its sabotaging subject matter, although the same can’t be said about the final migraine, ‘VMD’. The whole MLP is outsider and then some, with self-deprecating and contradictory lyrics spat and howled out a mile a minute, and it’s no surprise to see La Vida Es Un Mus getting behind it when they sound in parts like Hank Wood’s nuts penpal from Glasgow, or the French Frustration without a sense of composure.