(Opposite Number, released 7 April 2017)
“I’m not that vicious” sings H. Grimace songwriter and guitarist Hannah Gledhill on Self Architect’s opener ‘Thoroughbred’. Ironic, as the London-based foursome sound vitriolic as all hell on their debut. Following the quiet success of 2015’s I am Material tape and last year’s ‘Royal Hush’ 7”, Self Architect sustains H. Grimace’s malice toward familiar bogeymen in recent music – the ideal image, the nature of labour, and hyper-capitalist power relations. All contemporary issues, but also ones with roots in punk and its discontents; H. Grimace certainly fit post-punk’s obscured mould.
Of course, many bands nowadays do. Self Architect doesn’t do much differently – musically and thematically – to Savages’ punchy Adore Life or Priests’ Nothing Feels Natural, a close musical counterpart. But H. Grimace have more melodic sensitivity and, frankly, a bigger sound than these other recent releases. The group take Sonic Youth’s noise rock blueprint – sour classic rock; punk gone prog – and truncate it, with its equal nods to Goo’s dissonant jams and the lateral radio rock of Rather Ripped (the opening guitar clanging of ‘Call it Out’ could’ve easily come from either). What’s more, Gledhill seems to be capable of channelling both Thurston Moore’s boho-articulacy on lead single ‘Land/Body’ and Kim Gordon’s steadfast sneer on ‘Jockey’.
Self Architect’s Gordonism reaches a sustained peak on ‘2.1 Woman’, as a droll narration by collaborator poet and artist Vivienne Griffin reflects the grotesque collage of womanhood that blemishes Self Architect’s cover – a patchwork of womanly features transformed into a series of ugly, cavernous voids-within-voids; an inhuman thing made of human parts; a Frankenstein’s monster of hair partings and snow-white skin. However, for all Self Architect’s knives-out noise rock, it seems it could easily sound a little uglier, a little more jagged. The upcoming single ‘Lipsyncer’ has masterfully truncated pop hooks and plodding shoegaze impasses, but there’s less of I am Material’s grit forming a compelling mixture of the two. Conversely, at times where a harder edge is indeed present and needed most, such as on the apocalyptic storytelling of ‘The Dial’, uneven production simply means vocals are too indistinct to make out, which seems at odds with H. Grimace’s impetus on Self Architect.
H. Grimace are a highly convincing group, and Self Architect is a highly convincing record. Unfortunately, their patchwork influences and occasional lukewarm production mean they don’t stand out as much as they perhaps could. But their hero-worship of a strangely absent post-punk strain is refreshing within a genre mired in so much ‘meh’.