Right from their lo-fi beginnings, Glasgow’s Honeyblood have always been able to deliver the perfect kiss-off. It’s why it’s a relief to see that the duo’s self-titled debut album retains a fair slice of that crackle and hiss, Stina Tweeddale’s candy-coated vocals still providing a deceptive delivery method for her often venomous lyrics.
It’s not always big and it’s certainly not always clever - new single “Super Rat”, for example, combines three minutes of likening a cheating ex-boyfriend to the titular rodent with a playground chant of “scumbag, sleaze, slimeball, grease” - but Honeyblood the album is frustratingly, inconsistently, halfway to fantastic. The band’s simple setup features Tweeddale on guitar and lead vocals and Shona McVicar on drums, and while the premise might seem formulaic the scuff of a cymbal and the casual brilliance with which Tweeddale delivers blunt barbs like “when Mother Nature planned for age she must’ve forgot about you” destroys any notion of artifice.
The album’s bookends neatly illustrate the surprising flexibility of the band’s minimal approach: “Fall Forever” is the sort of giddy lovestruck opener Sky Ferreira would be proud of and its urgent riff and frenzied drumming never sound underdone; while Tweeddale’s wounded, lovelorn vocal performance on “Braidburn Valley”, like a juvey Jenny Lewis on a self-hating vision quest, buries itself in the listener’s soul. “Killer Bangs” is a firecracker of a track with an infectious melody, and “Choker” is by turns grungy and melodic, delivering violent imagery from an Angela Carter short story in the form of gorgeous call-and-response harmonies. If it wasn’t for the odd clunky lyric or, on “Fortune Cookie”, a disappointingly dull backing for one of the best lines on the album, this would easily be as good as debuts get. As it is, it’ll easily be the soundtrack to the rest of my summer.
Overleaf: watch the "Killer Bangs" video
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