Lovvers

by Simon T Diplock

This band will give you blisters

"Right now, with brooding, boring indie, run-of-the-mill rock, and bland pop everywhere, the intense emoting, swagger, attitude and carefree craziness pouring off this band sounds downright essential."

This band will give you blisters. Seriously, Northern noiseniks Lovvers move so fast that losing the feeling in your fingertips is kind of unavoidable here. Hell, hanging around to put that second ‘v’ in their name is probably the longest they’ve stopped to do anything.

The band- Michael Drake, Stephen Rose, Henry Withers, and former The Murder Of Rosa Luxemburg frontman Shaun Hencher- exploded into life two years back, booked out their first proper practice space a week later, and made their live debut just two weeks after that. Since then it seems they’ve played every available stage in the country, touring with Blood Red Shoes and Rolo Tomassi, supporting Foals and making them look like fluff-pop bores, and generally blowing everyone away with their short, sharp, shocks of songs. Online indie outlet Drowned In Sound called their live show “catharsis via controlled chaos” and one Kerrang! reader was so stunned that she wrote to the magazine calling the band "highly offensive". And really there are few better recommendations than that last one.

The band have no more bide their time in the studio. The first product of Lovvers recording time was a CD-R handed out on tour, a few songs of which made it on to the vinyl-only Johnson Family Records release ‘Lovvers EP’. Two more vinyls (the last of which is currently the only thing in the Lovvers back catalogue not absolutely sold out), a split EP, and three record labels followed, and then there’s new album ‘Think’, the band’s debut on Wichita Records, where they rattle through seven songs in under 15 minutes. And every second is great.

It’s not great because it’s clean or fresh- Lovvers have rarely sounded like they weren’t recorded in a cupboard- and not because it’s novel- all the material is easy to trace backwards, to the beginning of punk or the middle of grunge. No, it’s great because right now, with brooding, boring indie, run-of-the-mill rock, and bland pop everywhere, the intense emoting, swagger, attitude and carefree craziness pouring off this band's new disc sounds downright essential.

‘No Romantics’ is the sort of freewheeling noise that …And You Know us By The Trail Of Dead first arrived with, ‘No Fun’ sounds like The Hives if they’d never escaped their hometown and were still filled with fuzzy rage as well as wicked wit, ‘Wasted Youth’ sounds like the Wipers mixed with… well, it sounds like Wasted Youth, and if the Lovvers don’t have ragged and worn copies of ‘Come On Pilgrim’ or ‘Bleach’ in their collective record collection then New-Noise will eat all of your hats.

Lovvers aren’t asking for you attention then, they’re demanding it. Appearing as four skinny boys from Nottingham, they howl and yell and push and shove and leave you with pop hooks, punk spirit, and hissing static barrelling around your brain, and the urgent desire to press play and get near one of their gigs all over again. Oh, and those blisters of course. Amazing.

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