Split Definitives: Joy Of Sex / Gindrinker

In my hometown in South Wales there was a band which had a bassist who would often play starkers – nothing more than a sock to cover his giblets. When I heard the name of one of the new Cardiff acts featured here, I thought only nudist trouble could lie up ahead, but I might have been wrong about Joy Of Sex.

For the past year and a half, there’s been a new sound coming out of Wales, which has been both exciting and infuriating to watch as the quality of music has wavered so much. That sound is a return to the period of bands like Joy Divison and Ultravox! with smatterings of British punk (both kinds) and strains of dub step whacked in for good measure.

Joy Of Sex aren’t ignorant of this exciting sound and settle down to take their place somewhere between the outrageously wild antics of Islet, and the slightly more poppy offerings of The Victorian English Gentlemens Club. Their first track, ‘Red Rocket’, is a very catchy, very poppy offering with drum beats galore and incomprehensible lyrics, which as the title suggests, takes flight very quickly with the dub step bass that’s so characteristic of Cardiff at the moment, using drum sounds to form the melody. It’s all going well when at 2:25 in there’s a quick change to an altogether more exciting part of the song, but it’s curtailed so quickly that it can leave you feeling rather cheated.

Next, the click track for ‘Hypnic Jerk’ has a bit of a go followed by cascading guitar chops which are very reminiscent of ‘She Lost Control’ by Joy Division. The lyrical content is as off-the-wall as ‘Red Rocket’, with lines such as “Baby I wonder why why we try / When love is just violence well disguised / So we measure our daily dose as prescribed / With diligence never sold as advertised,’ but despite this it’s still a nice track, easy to put on repeat.

The other half of this two-band four-song split comes from another Welsh group by the name of Gindrinker, as suggested to label I Blame The Parents Records by Joy Of Sex themselves. It’s hard to see why exactly as the association seems unlikely. Nonetheless, Joy Of Sex have made two great tracks here, even if they are a little on the pretentious side.