Menace Beach - Lowtalker

To record ‘Lowtalker’, Menace Beach spent four days at MJ’s (Hookworms) Suburban Home Studios, digesting pizza, coffee and falafel to fuelling a rapid recording session. The group features members of Sky Larkin, Hookworms and You Animals as well as Mansun vocalist Paul Draper, who contributes vocals and guitars on some tracks. Honing in on the 90s-influenced rock that debut EP ‘Dream Out’ and last year’s Too Pure double A-side ‘Dropouts / Tastes Like Medicine’ provided, the group refresh their relative infancy with five tracks “getting better, making friends and trying to reconnect mentally and spiritually”

The result is a composed collection of tracks, with founders Liza Violet and Ryan Needham a perfect foil for each other with their bleary and bratty vocals coming to the fore on tracks like ‘Fortune Teller’ and ‘Where I Come From’. ‘Honolulo’ shows their murkier side, channelling their ear for shoegaze with heavy swathes of tremolo and reverb competing with timorous vocals. Closing track ‘Cheerleader’ is all out fuzz and breakdown and alongside ‘Nervous’, it gives the release a refreshed, more angular feeling than Needham’s past group Komakino produced.