Clockcleaner - Hands Are For Holding (Load)
3/5
By: Charlie Potter
At first it would seem that a lot that is of merit to Hands Are For Holding resides in the guitar sound - the echoing, flickering, menacing scratchiness which has been refined to the point that it sounds like Clockcleaner have somehow organised a myriad of cables and wires to snap chromatically.
But is it really possible, can an album really be summed up that easily? No. Of course not. But the pay off certainly resides here. Not just any riff would sound good with this guitar sound, and it would be quite a boring experience listening to just the guitar part on its own. The creepy, throaty, squeezed vocal reminds me vaguely of King Buzzo of the Melvins, or even more of Andy Cairns of Therapy?... now that I come to mention it, Therapy? are all over Hands are for Holding - the seedy aggressiveness, the general psychosis, the feeling of a person who is not quite 'all there' being behind the songs. Of course, it's minus the pop choruses, and the general embarrassment of Therapy?, (we know you like Troublegum, stop denying it to yourself) but that's about as far as that comparison goes.
One difference between the bands is that it is almost certain that the singer fella in Therapy? is genuinely unhinged, whereas this lad seems slightly more like he's putting on an act, or if you want to get all art theory about it, Clockcleaner seem like they're doing less to hide the fact that this album is in a way performative - it's clear that the character of the singer is at least exaggerated if not entirely acted, and that's just fine by me, to me that means all the fun of the theatre.
There is certainly nothing particularly original about Clockcleaner's overall sound, which is unusual for a Load records band. It's just placing the sound that's difficult. But oooh, I just got a touch of the David Yow there in 'Daddy Issues', which has suddenly given the game up. There is definitely a massive Jesus Lizard comparison to be made here, in fact mostly in the guitar sound and indeed guitar chords, but it's also apparent in the vocals, those vocals of someone in desperation whaling out in pain.
One thing about Hands Are For Holding that is slightly boring is that every song follows a very similar one riff backdrop style structure. It suits the creepiness to have a slow lurking monotony to it, but by the end of the album you get a little bit tired of being able to predict the structural pay off - the riff you have heard for the majority of the song played a bit louder with more feeling, with a renewed vigour from the vocalist.
Overall a lot of the time I find myself really drawn to listening to this album because of the enveloping nature of the sound, because of how fun it is to join in and pretend that you yourself are psychotic as well, but I rarely find that I can keep any level of attentive listening all the way through, something that is difficult with most albums but disappointingly so with this one. Clockcleaner are still a great band, but I'm sure they would get a lot more mileage out of their sound if they played around with it more.
Stream 'Vomiting Mirrors' from 'Hands Are For Holding' HERE.
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