Here’s a riddle for you: When is a long player not a long player? Answer: When Lovvers are involved. The expression ‘fast and furious’ may well have been created for this old school hardcore punk quartet and their debut “album”. Just stretching over the fifteen minute mark, panting like an Olympic sprinter, Lovvers have created a truly 21st century album, despite their backwards-looking sound. For those with short attention spans, or those governed by the fateful powers of the iPod Shuffle, Think represents the perfect opportunity to get familiar enough with a band to know you want them playing a midnight gig in your living room and smashing your neighbour’s headlamps.
My trusty and learned friend Wiki P. Dia tells me that Nottingham has a “strong DIY punk scene”. Be that as it may, the only famous rock musician I can recall to have emerged from the English East Midlands city is one of the lads from Editors, a band not exactly congruent with a Dischord Records ethos. So I’ve come to the conclusion that this ear-splitting, party-crashing four-pack of firebrands screaming their little heads off into my headphones at the moment are as their press release says: “based nowhere, and residing pretty much everywhere”. One of them is probably from Seattle in the 60s, another from California around about 1980, and at least one of them, though he certainly won’t admit it, was larging it up in Shoreditch just a couple of years ago.
Named after no-wave noise-ballistas Aids Wolf, their aural barrage is a similarly potent weapon for destroying your ear’s fortifications. But anyone can make a little bit of loud noise and pass it off as art. Lovvers don’t seem preoccupied with such pretensions. Witness the brit-rock lead riff of No Romantics and the joyous bounce of Teenage Shutdown and the East Midlands boys achievements are clear as day: They make you dance, they make you headbang, they make you remember the simplistic pleasures of rock, and they make you look up Nottingham on the internet. There’s no riddle to it.
See also: The Minutemen- Double Nickels On The Dime [SST], The Germs- MIA [Slash], Aids Wolf- The Lovvers LP [Skin Graft]
