"Band dr canada dengan style post-punk baru yg di bawain The d'Urbervilles lbh beragam, dr character voc yg non-new wave lbh ke era avant-pop walau dr segi post-punk nya msh terasa bgt di ketukan drum, dan musik yg lbh baru dengan di tambahkannya suara glockenspiel,clapin and melodi2 guitar di tengah2 lagu... key track di lagu hot tips sama dragnet membuat cita rasa post-punk tersendiri bagi The d'Urbervilles..." - clapclapclap
Genre : Indie/Rock/Post-Punk
It’s a bad season not to have a snow shovel. In fact, it’s snowing in Hogtown right now and, unfortunately for me, I broke my landlord’s shovel this past weekend while attempting to clear out a place to park my friend’s car. Promising that I’d replace it, I loaded We Are the Hunters, The D’Urbervilles debut full-length, into my iPod and dutifully made my way over to the local mall (ugh…).
Last week, when I featured standout track, “Hot tips,” I described the song as confident, seductive and pounding. Having since had the time to give We Are the Hunters a few more listens in its entirety while searching for a snow clearing implement, I have no problem attributing those adjectives to the rest of the album as well.
Opening in admirable instrumental fashion with the pervasive mood-setter, “Knock Out the Fat,” and followed by the menacing title track, it becomes obvious early on that there’s just something knowingly cocksure and sinister about this entire release. I mean, there I was walking across the parking lot of the Gerrard Square mall, a 25 year-old over-privileged dork with a large coffee in one hand and bags of groceries in the other, and just listening to We Are the Hunters had me feeling like a tough, streetwise Tarantino character who had a shotgun tucked safely beside his skim milk.
Maybe it’s lyrics like the anthemic “We are hunters / it’s time for killing“ (from the title track) or the weighty bass of songs like “This is the Life,” but this album just seems to lend a certain sense of badass gravitas (now there’s an album title!) to an everyday stroll.
Of course, at their worst, The D’Urbervilles can run slightly into Killers territory, but thankfully this is rare. More often than not they evoke the riotous energy of early Constantines (hmm, it seems I’ve been beaten to the punch on both of these comparisons by Chart and Exclaim! respectively…alas). There’s also a nice vocal interplay here between the urgent bursts of group shouting and the Ray Davies-esque croon of Tim Bruton (as evidenced on both “Hot Tips” and the title track). However, as the previously mentioned opener suggests, The D’Urbervilles seem just as confident letting their explosive riffage do the talking, with quite a few of the songs featuring large instrumental breaks that are just as engaging as their vocalized counterparts.
Unfortunately for me—not to mention my overly passive landlord who likely won’t press the issue—the mall was sold out of snow shovels, but at least I got to feel like a hotshot as I strutted my stuff through Home Depot.
get it
buy it
