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11th October 1997, N.M.E.
It is perhaps the most confounding of all modern-day enigmas that certain pockets of humanity choose to fritter away their existance by pouting glumly in candlelit bedsits to the relentless ditchwater dirgings of the wholly reprehensible Cranes. For eight interminable years Jim and Alison Shaw have been providing dour soundtracks for the unfortunate lives of pitiful wretches who should really try to get out more, and 'EP Collection' is a compendium of their innumerable career troughs.
Alison Shaw is afflicted with the kind of voice that could peel paint at 50 paces. A spectacle-shattering, incoherent twitter that gurgles, flutters and squeals with a truely ear-piercing intensity. It's a formidable weapon, an amalgam of ickle-girl whining and murder-in-the-nursery gothic affections that shreds the nerves and anihillates the spirit. One is left with the distinct impression that, when cross, Alison is quite prepared to scweam until she is copiously sick.
Jim, meanwhile, complements his sister's strangled squawking with a bland and monotonous sub-Swans reunciation of dynamism. Guitars grind, tempos dawdle and an air of utter holesness and artless resignation permeates the entire lamentable affair like auditory rigor mortis.
The priceless and joyous gift of life is way too short to waste on this airy-fairy, uninspired, navel-contemplating farrago of ethereal frippery and inconsiquential bobbins. Tragically, however, a veritable army of patchouli-reeking, whey-faced crypt-dwellers are currently unstitching their shrouds and inundating suburban indie emporia with ill guided requests for this very aural emetic.
You're a long time dead. And really, the 110-minute 'EP Collection' is a very poor substitute for knitting a scarf or creosoting a fence.
(1/10)
Reviewed by Ian Fortnam
© NME 1997
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