M(h)aol - Attachment Styles

When M(h)aol’s fury hits the spot, it really hits. Opener ‘Asking For It’ repeats its hypothetical question - “Was I asking for it?” - while the track descends into wild cacophony, an angrier sister track, perhaps, to Dream Wife’s recent ‘Leech’: both contrasting crystal-clear vocals and unhinged guitars to force uncomfortable introspection. That bassist Jamie Hyland was behind the desk for Gilla Band’s first two albums is all but given away come ‘Nice Guys’, as discordance rules: ‘Attachment Styles’ uses a similar set of textures to their Irish neighbours, albeit with a message more pointed than, for example, a popular chocolate spread. When the repetition works - say, the “I don’t want attention” of the discordant ‘Nice Guys’ serving to suggest anything but - it’s trance-like. But at other points - namely ‘Bored of Men’ - it verges on the grating, voices and instruments creating an incessant, claustrophobic spiral. Similarly, while ‘Anxiety’ conveys the emotions within well, its spoken-word delivery doesn’t. Still, it’s no easy task to impart such emotionally-fraught issues in song, and for the most part, ‘Attachment Styles’ succeeds.