It’s a delight in a pouch, heroin before you hit the couch. Something to remember while you invariably forget. 9 o’clock Nasty release their first full length EP Catch Nasty, and make sure you reel yourself in for the surprise. They are going old-school, and by that, I mean premium tech of the 90’s. CDs and a whole set of surprises. They have two sides of packed garage rock and punk, hair shredding, jeans ripping and soaked in denim days of enjoyment.
I got to hear this album as a 2 side CD, the way I began listening to music since when I was a kid. Add to that the excitement of it being a genre I enjoy, 9 o’clock are doing us a favor going sharp into garage rock revival (Jack White sheds a tear).
Reviewing a revival
Enough of banter, we begin with Monstruosa, the first in their triple A side they released a week back. It is a bopping, high energy punk number-borrowing from the beer-soaked God of punk, Iggy Pop. Raw power in a bottle indeed, the quick number is catchy as well as well-intentioned to make you lose your shit, whole. I got to do another interview with 9 o’clock and here are some excerpts from a rather interesting conversation.
The EPs are a deliberate approach to the problem a new band faces with social media. We write a lot of material and love it very much, and it is more effective to release some music every few weeks to build an audience. We’re especially excited with the response from people all over the globe. It would be difficult to play for those people in person, but you never know. Each EP we put together carefully to balance them and offer a little of each aspect of our musical ideas.
We always wanted to make an album, but they are far harder to promote. So, CATCH NASTY is two things. Firstly, it is how we always wanted those songs to be heard. As a 35-minute series of songs. With small callbacks and references between them. Little clips of audio to join them together and packaging we can really fill with fun.
The second thing was to challenge ourselves. Streaming a song from Spotify or another site requires very little investment by the listener. It brings virtually no reward to the artist. We wanted to make something that people had to make a commitment to.
We think we absolutely achieved what we set out to in the first part. We’re really pleased with the album. It isn’t the best thing this band will ever do. We are still growing and we still have a lot to say. But it is the absolute best thing we’ve done so far.
For the second part we’ll see. Sales have been good, and the response is way better than we dared hope for. We include a postcard in the pack with the CD for the listener to write back to us and the things people have sent have made us laugh and feel like we know these amazing strangers all over the world that dig what we do. Let’s see over the next few months if the record keeps touching people, it will still be there when we’ve done five more EPs for anyone curious about where we started.
Going against the grain
Reminds me of the time TOOL release these fun CDs to show them how audio quality differs and as a thank you supporting them with insane art and audio experiences. The second track is the catchy Ballroom Blitz drumbeat dance number, called Gravy Train. It has the required effect, making the lyrics and melody a cohesive whole of a band that is determined to make you get on the dance floor. No regrets. The funky guitar makes sure you’re well within the groove as well.
I asked 9 o’clock if they stray away from norms and try to mix in genres, this was their reply.
Genres and defying expectations
Absolutely. Playing with people’s expectations is so important. You want to release songs with a trademark style so that you reward someone that has been with you a while and is into you. You want to freak them out sometimes and surprise them and you want to vary the mix to bring in new people: there isn’t any value in just remaking the first EP again and again. We hope nobody ever feels that about us. So we started with glam rock (in a song that hasn’t been released yet called “No Garry No,Your Views Are Too Extreme for the 9 O’Clock Nasties”) (hi Garry!), we’ve gone back to punk and psychedelia again and again because they work well for us, we’ve tried rockabilly and some more experimental stuff.
The next single is an absolute out-and-out no compromise disco song. It is intended to be the best disco song ever made. That’s always what you’ve got to try and do. Hopefully though there will be enough of our personality and style running through it that people who know it want to dance and sing along and whether their joy is the thrill of a good dance song or wry amusement at us twisting another genre doesn’t matter.
Their next number is a Joy Division regression into a Pixies number, Let’s Talk About Your Boyfriend. With stark vocal delivery and little to no instrument flourishes, it does the trick as a sonic stalker, as the title would suggest, I guess. Not going to break into the minds of artists to what they suppose and don’t, not my job. The job is to enjoy the track, and I did, hoping we’re going into some quick pace changes.
Lipps Inc. fans, you’re in for a treat, the two of you reading this! Say No to Funk has the signature Funkytown riff and beat, and a nice callback to an era which is too inappropriate to even breathe in 2021. The guitars leak in whenever they can, with the protest hardly doing any damage to the funky undertone that the song carries. It’s a nice experiment, with the punk-funk feel being something that will annoy purists for sure.
Big Fish is that style of song you hear in the Ocean’s series during the heists that makes it sound great then, and then forever. As the scene is laser engraved in your memory forever, the bassline and swinging drum beat make sure we’re in the movie and you’re the big fish being praised.
Last Chance is an interesting disco style number, but focusing on the funk of the bass and low heavy beat. Using the monotony to make the difference, its Mudhoney joining forces with the initial DJs of the 90’s to make a fun number.
Dead Planet was part of their triple A side, which released last week. It follows the previous track to make for a welcome tempo change with an exciting riff, and a culpable dread in the air which should be sung about. The distorted mic vocals add to the dystopian delivery, just like your De Stijl The White Stripes years.
These songs would be a hoot to listen to live, especially in order- so I asked 9 o’clock the advice they would give other young bands starting out:
Play live and play often. It is pointless. It will not make you famous. You will play to people that don’t appreciate what you do and you will play to big rooms with only one or two loyal and patient friends for an audience. It will give you two things.
It will sharpen your skills. Your songs should get shorter. Arrangements tighter. You’ll write better songs. You’ll begin to find your own style. You can’t do that sitting at a desk playing on a computer. The computer comes later. You will lose money playing gigs. Do it anyway. It’s an investment.
It will break your ego. You may be the best. But you probably aren’t. Get a sense of how limited the appeal of your talent is and build up a core of burning resentment against all the people that don’t understand your art. Nurture that rage.
When you’re angry and bruised, write some good songs, and promote yourself beyond the limits of human endurance. It probably won’t work but it is worth it anyway.
Mixing it up with electronica as well
Gammon vs Pilgrim is a Gorillaz style number with not much to lose. They have a solid bassline in place and your techno beat. Focus on the lyrics and you may be on to something. Searching for something musical? The background keeps reviving itself for an electric surprise every once in a way.
Sick Child of the Swinging Sixties takes a sick bass line and lets the instruments follow. It is a very 90s number, sometimes even giving a nod to Les Claypool and his beastly band Primus. More recorded audio follows, and we’re onto the next side, with that harrowing sound that I used to hear when tapes got stuck and the film would be pouring out. Thank you, digital age of music?
Fly me to Side B
Side B begins with Unspool my Heart, a very Stones sounding number. I’m a fan of very few Stones songs, and this follows in the line of Brown Sugar and the other blues infused numbers from Sticky Fingers. The song has streaks of punk within this blues style number, and is a great chord progression to follow.
Terror Couple Kill Colonel makes a catchy sound with overlapping sounds and recordings, probably from some reference I’m way out of the zeitgeist for. The song itself is a haunting rock number, with the suspense and drama a track like this requires.
The band is ready to play live and have a lot of stuff lined up in the coming months:
We have a lot of material we’re recording and finishing off. Good material. Having great songs, you haven’t released yet is a good feeling. It is like artistic money in the bank. We also started working ourselves into becoming a live band. Although we have all done many, many gigs over the years, we haven’t played live as 9 o’clock Nasty and the songs were written to record in the studio, not to play live. So, it is a lot of fun to take those songs and work out how to play them, it makes a nice change from writing songs too.
It helps when people say nice things about our work. Now we’re new and unknown so there is very little reason for anyone to slag us off. That may come one day, in fact the first time we get a terrible review will probably be an important waypoint on the road to success. This is not our first rodeo. We’ve been in bands before and we have very thick skin.
Telling tales through tracks
Probably it is the thick skin making them this experimental and ballsy, trying new things within probably what will be their Sgt. Peppers (reference to your reference, cheers). King of Hackney acts as an interlude to another new wave style song, Walkman Walk. A nice reference to the years when a bright yellow tape player was fixed to your pants, and your dignity depended on your belt. The heavy synth gives a great background for the catchy lyrics and diverse bassline.
If They Won’t Eat Beef is a Ramones/The Clash style angry track about something that seems to be bothering them. Vegans. Yuck. Alright, enough hate towards a group that don’t really have the energy to argue. I support this song a 100%, and is going to be my standard reply to a certain people on my chat list.
THX1138 is the third track from the triple A side. It is a groovy number, probably one of their strongest in my opinion, and shows us what the band is about. What Time is Nasty? closes this reference packed Kinder Joy of an album, filled with surprises and best of all-music. For the closer, they make a groovy phunk (I’m coining a term for punk & funk) number and finishes what can be the beginning of an interesting new wave for garage rock & punk. Here are 9 o’clock Nasty’s future plans:
Nasty & the near future
We have a double A side single for November. As we said before it is dancefloor material, and the first cover-versions we’ve released.
On one side is a re-construction of Sexy Back, the Timberlake song. We’d been kicking the idea of doing a cover version for a while and it really lends itself to our…. slightly different view of the world. The song works well as he performs it, but it also works well as a very, very dark look at sexuality and power. We’ve turned everything to eleven and thrown ourselves into it. We are disco kings.
The other is a Bauhaus song, Terror Couple Kill Colonel. Bauhaus were superb at covering other people’s songs. They somehow captured how the song “felt” without copying it precisely. We tried to do that with our version. It still has the pain and the drama, but it is heavily modernised and much more dance-friendly. We previewed it on some online Goth groups expecting to be given a hard time but they loved it.
After that it will be back onto the EPs again, we already have the songs for the next one (“Party”) worked out and recorded, and they return to a much more garage-rock or post-punk feel. Expect one a month for all next year.
The biggest change will be taking on live shows. We know we are unlikely to make any money out of it, but the joy of playing this stuff with people in the room and really getting in their faces makes it irresistible. It will be very raw, and as far from a bog standard gig as we can take it.
Expect a broken cabaret of noise. If we can we’ll share material from that online for people that can’t travel to see us. Genuinely though, we would say to anyone reading this that would be into it, if you know a venue or festival that is batshit crazy and would welcome what we do, we would consider travelling to make it happen if it captures our interest. Get in touch.
For the true fans of music, yours truly, 9 o’clock Nasty. I sign off as well, completely indulging in an album that I would like to desperately own, so I’m off to make that purchase.
Buy their CD online and have a preview here:
https://9oclocknasty.bandcamp.com/album/catch-nasty
Check out our playlists here!
Discovered via http://musosoup.com
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Self professed metalhead, moderately well read. If the music has soul, it's whole to me. The fact that my bio could have ended on a rhyme and doesn't should tell you a lot about my personality.
