September 14, 2011

Album Review: Male Bonding - 'Endless Now'

Grunge three-piece branch out to different genres

Album Info

Release Date: September 5, 2011
Label: Sub Pop
Fact: Drummer Robin had never played a cymbal before recording this album
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7 / 10 Let’s not kid ourselves here: overwhelmingly great is the debt that Male Bonding owe to the luminaries of grunge. The sound that the London three-piece have cultivated over the past three years is so reliant on that genre you’d be hard pushed to find much evidence that their music was created in 2011.

But what prevents this admittedly sycophantic trio from being just another fawning parasite on music of yore (which at times they come quite close to being) is the elegance with which they mesh the aggressive ardour of Dinosaur Jr and the fuzzy fury of early Nirvana on some rare occasions on ‘Endless Now’. ‘The Saddle’ may be sloppily wet behind the ears, and macabre surf-pop like ‘Channelling Your Fears’ is better done by the likes of Belfast trio Girls Names, but the shimmering beauty of ‘Tame The Sun’ and the My Bloody Valentine atmospherics of ‘Bones’ serve to elevate the aesthetic that Male Bonding established on their debut ‘Nothing Hurts’ to greater heights.

Ash Dosanjh

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Average rating

6.9

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