ninehertz

Love Hurts are a four-piece from Coventry, but you could be forgiven for thinking they are from some metropolis stateside. Their music is punk-informed but comes primarily in garage flavour. That's a fun bubblegum flavour rather than a dark and dangerous blackberry I reckon (these flavour analogies doing anything for you?)

This is their second tape and features a Jesus lookalike called Marc on the cover looking a bit confused, nothing to do with the music, just worth mentioning.

The music, the music, well it's both fun and full of menace. The first riff of opener Punk In Magic sounds a little bit like 2 Unlimited's There's No Limit but that soon fades when the vocals kick in, it's a punchy little spiky number and the staccato chorus/ending sounds great live too.

Kurt Cobain is a bit more surfer and laid back for the most part, singer Mark's style here is a bit Lee Dorrian weirdly, kind of off-kilter and wild about the face. listen to the Cathedral album VIIth Coming and you'll see what I mean. This is the most garagey the band get on here, all distorted vocals and space between the notes to spark one up and get pumped (if that's what you like to do with your time, I'm not here to judge).

The title track sounds like The Strokes on a downer, What the fuck am I doing here? wails Mark, it's like turning up to a party where everyone you hate from school is there to ask you what you've done with your life, just fuck off yeah?

Future Music should surely be a Daft Punk album title, instead here it's a fantastic bass riff introducing a brief Ramones-like blast of punk'd up rock and roll, all slurred vocals and surprise endings.

Closer and probably my highlight is Shifters which ramps up the nastiness, 'You're a joke, a fucking joke' has probably never been sang over such upbeat music before, so well done for that.