The Vaults - 'Friday Night - Monday Morning Blackout EP' (Red Flag)
2/5
By: Thomas Hannan
In the grand scheme of things, The Vaults are not looking forward, nor particularly bothered with looking backward, they're just looking down at their feet and aggressively nodding their heads. If you like your music honest, then this is about as straight-up as rock music gets. But if you like it interesting, either pass on this one, or turn it up until it reaches some horrific, deafening level of bizarre amusement.
Strangely, you see, instead of immediately running for something a little more stimulating, you're kept sufficiently intrigued by The Vaults' swagger. The stomping riff-heavy opener 'Straight Faced' ends on a suitably cocky declaration to all in search of something of high brow, intellectual worth - 'I've got no need to change.' Well, we'll see about that.
For, as will become obvious, the 'Friday Night - Monday Morning Blackout' EP could do with a sprinkling of variety here, there and everywhere. If the amount of fun had whilst listening to it was plotted against the time it ran on some kind of (admittedly useless) graph, there'd be an unmistakable downward incline - it all becomes a little stale too soon, an EP where each track just sounds like a differently paced part of a larger, all-encompassing one. Is it just us, or is 'Crawl Away' essentially just the riff from the preceding 'Straight Faced', only played backwards? Perhaps so, but in any case it's delivered with a commendable growl, and thumbs (or should that be devil horns?) up to that guitar sound.
To say that if you like Jet then you'll like this is slightly misleading. It's probably safer just sticking with Jet. Although the similarities are glaringly obvious, the main difference would probably be that The Vaults, at this point in time at least, seem slightly less marketable. This is at least a good thing, an opportunity to bring some underground grit back into f**ked-up rock music, but admirably, those Aussies do use their airplay-friendly sensibilities to knock out a couple of fun tunes. Whilst the overall aesthetic here is far from dull, there's unfortunately little chance it'll make you smile all that often.
Artists in this article: The Vaults
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