The Dials
"Sick Times" CD EP (Self-released)
Falling somewhere between 1960s mod (is that a Farfisa?) and 1990s riot grrrl, the songs are jagged, angular, busted beer bottles of music. They're loose, simple and raw, sounding like people figuring out how to play instruments while writing songs in a garage, unfettered by ideas of how something should be done and, instead, creating what sounds good. That isn't to say that this sounds amateurish, merely that it reminds me of early punk bands creating in a vacuum of interest when the possibilities were still open and the horizons of what a band could do hadn't been narrowed by commercial prospects.