Purveyors of existential excursions, alienated arias and life songs that go awry, Young Knives are back.

Santoku Knife: Henry Dartnell’s undergone a metamorphosis, out with the tweed, in with the weed, resembling a cross-cultural car-car-crash between Captain Caveman and Frank Zappa, a transmogrification consummate with the new angles and avenues the band are pursuing.

Paring Knife: Sibling and fraterniser in rhyme (and reason) is The House of Lords (Thomas Dartnell) on all manner of sounds and compounds.

Ever since their Andy ‘Gang of Four’ Gill produced 2005 debut single ‘The Decision’ right up to last LP, 2013’s Sick Octave Young Knives have always been a step forward, ahead of the tune, taking their time, where most replicate, they innovate. Their lack of ‘success’ only serves to illustrate critic and satirist H.L. Mencken’s dictum about ‘mass’ appeal, underestimating and never going broke.

The group have hit upon a novel idea of merchandise that commands attendance and demands tendance (French for ‘trend’, linguistics fans); t-shirts with the gig’s setlist on, they themselves have said ‘The idea of these T-shirts is that if the audience already know what we are going to play then we can’t hide behind the list of songs to make the show better, we just have to surprise you in other ways’. And surprise they did.

Never a group to perform the norm or deliver the anticipated, the ‘old’ songs are given a deluxe-redux, reconstructed deconstructions of preconceived constructions. With nothing played prior to 2008, 2013’s ‘White Sands’, ‘Marble Maze’ and ‘Owls of Athens’ all receive extraordinary renditions.

October’s surprise ‘Red Cherries’ showcases their more arty-party side, with shades of Scritti Politti’s skank rock messthetics as drummer Zahra (who also performs as Despicable Zee) crashes, bashes and smashes cherry-shaped percussion in an act of avant-gardening. Dada-dum.

New compositions also include ‘Barbarians’, ‘Black Paint’ and ‘I can hardly see them’: heavier, harder, higher. Confounding, resounding and astounding.  

‘2008’s ‘Terra Firma’ is initially unrecognisable, all Edgar Broughton Band tower of power and electro-throbbing gristle that has a subtle echo of Joy Division’s ‘A means to an end’ in its deep and downward declination.  A BeefheartIan Curtis, if you like.

By the end there are two drummers, a drum machine, rock-riffage and a networked technotronics that creates a backdrop of orchestrated noise-ablution that evokes the 1980’s ‘Big Music’ (c.f. Big Country, U2, The Waterboys). Their vision is precision.

For those expecting a ‘greatest hits’ trot-through the message is relayed: Old Knives are dead.  Young Knives Live.

5/5

Kemper Boyd

@dissapointon