Formerly the house band at Liverpool's fantastic 'Hell's Ditch' Americana night, RATTLEBUS went on to prove they were very much their own entity when they released their potent 'Freak Heirs' single back in the mists of 2006 and have been beavering away perfecting their likeably gritty guitar pop sound ever since.
Released on Andy Jones' excellent Pink Moon label (responsible in the past for glorious Scouse pop excursions courtesy of the likes of Barbel, The Jactars and The Da Vincis), 'Rattlebus' features 12 slices of the kind of sardonic, idiosyncratic and largely brilliant rock'n'roll Merseyside has always done so well. Yes, it's often intuitive rather than hugely polished, but when it sounds this thrilling, who really cares.
Opener 'Riding In Circles' gives you some idea of what to expect. Pretty much the sound of ragged glory in excelsis, it finds the 'Bus swaggering around like a tanked-up Liverpudlian Crazy Horse or Replacements, but the snottiness, the gnarly guitar figures and the fact co-frontmen Tim Glover and Martin Ward's harmonies tend to be of the scuffed and lived-in variety merely add to the attraction.
Most of what follows is equally engaging too. Songs like 'Mercury', ' Don't Believe' and a revisited 'Freak Heirs' soon imprint themselves on your memory with their biting and snapping guitars, raspy hooks, raw-throated vocal attack and the rhythm section of Phil McHoul (bass) and drummer Steve Vasey pushing, prodding and keeping it fluid throughout. All the tunes are stuffed with scabrously witty observations, too, not least the leering 'Heavy Metal Girls' which opens with the immortal couplet "whatever happened to the heavy metal girls who used to fancy me?/ maybe they settled down, maybe I got ugly" before going on to refer to both tampons and 'Nutbush City Limits'. As you do.
All the above have an ability to seamlessly merge melting tenderness with an aggressive streak, but nowhere is this better displayed than on the kookily wonderful 'Jackie Leigh' - where the song's main character is an altruistic girl who chains herself to the Sellafield perimeter post but everyone else thinks is mad because "all she wanted to do was hug the world". It's beautifully observed and - along with the deceptively jaunty anti-pharmaceutical rant of 'Keeping The Chemist' and the REM-go-raga excitement of 'Coelacanth' - forges a truly fascinating middle section for the album to feed off.
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They keep plenty of bitten-off genius in reserve as they head for the tape too. 'At The Bus Stop' has some great, blink-and-you-miss-'em lyrics ("you used double negatives/ there was nothing you wouldn't do") and a false ending that will wrong fool you for ages; 'Torchy & The Moonbeams' provides the record's nagging, gnarled ballad for you to dream on to and the closing 'Ricochet' is perhaps the best thing of all here with its' anthemic chorus and valedictory guitar overload, sending you home with a real shit-eating grin on your mug and sounding like a future classic-in-waiting into the bargain.
Devoid of obvious weakness, oozing ornery attitude and spewing manic guitar thrills all over the place, 'Rattlebus' is a great, take no prisoners debut from a band keen to do their own thing and damn the torpedoes. Listen up kids: this is still the way it should be done.
(www.rattlebus.co.uk)
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