Eight Rounds Rapid – Writeabout / Steve (Podrophenia Records)
‘Window-licking, channel-flicking, TV dinners, sniffing thinners, lotto playing, fare-evading, shoplifting, jumble sifting’. These were the words that greeted me after 25 seconds of a mind shatteringly and latently violent twin assault of lead guitar and crashing drums from Southend’s ‘Eight Rounds Rapid’. This month sees them unleash the blistering and swaggeringly catchy double A sider ‘Writeabout/Steve’. This is the bands first ever release on vinyl and is limited to 500 hand numbered copies, and they claim that this is the only format that ‘Writeabout’ will be available on. ‘Eight Rounds Rapid’ have brought Thames Deltaesque rock n roll kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
‘Writeabout’ comes at you with both barrels well and truly blazing. This is a venomous slice of back to basics rock n roll, coupled with socially observant lyrics that sum up in a few neat sentences the current sense of apathy in that seems to have gripped many in Britain, but clearly not this lot. The flipside and fans favourite ‘Steve’ has an infectious ‘Dr Feelgood’ type groove with catchy guitar hooks and lyrics. This is a distinctively English sounding record, which is further emphasized by vocalist David Alexander who delivers lyrics like ‘I don’t know what to believe, so I am going round to talk to Steve’ in his own regional dialect.
2013 has proved to be an exciting year for the band after supporting the legendary Wilko Johnson on his recent farewell tour and rumours of an album are in the pipeline. ‘Eight Rounds Rapid’ have recently caught the attention of BBC Radio London and BBC Radio 6. Songs such as ‘Dostoyevsky’ and ‘Channel Swimmer’ have been wafting from the airwaves of the ‘Gary Crowley Show’ on BBC Radio London and from BBC 6 Music, with Mark Radcliffe, Gideon Coe and Steve Lamaq finding enough room on their play lists to give this band some well deserved airtime. If these plaudits are not enough then Tom Robinson has also added their track ‘Channel Swimmer’ to his latest Radio 6 Mixtape.
I have heard that ‘Eight Rounds Rapid’ are influenced by their Thames Estuary forebears ‘Dr Feelgood’ and with Wilko Johnson’s son Simon on lead guitar, complimentary comparisons like this are going to be made. However, let’s sweep these generalizations to one side for a moment, as ‘Eight Rounds Rapid’ is no ‘pastiche’ to a bygone era. Their music is very contemporary sounding, tough, gutsy, passionate and belongs firmly in the moment, if you need evidence of this then you must listen to songs like ‘Dostoyevsky’, ‘Stalker’, ‘Kix’, ‘Dirty’ and ‘Ryder’.
‘Eight Rounds Rapid’ are playing at the ‘Spice of Life’ on 27th September 2013.
