The Playwrights - English Self Storage (Sink & Stove)
3/5
By: Thomas Hannan
As if the way they title both themselves and their records wasn't hint enough, we delight in telling you that The Playwrights are very, very much a product of England's green and pleasant land (not that there's a whole lot of that left) and proud of it. Not in the sense that they want to shave off all their hair, cultivate a beer gut and shout a mixture of xenophobia and sexist vulgarities (God save the queen, whurrrr dahlin'...) at passers by, but in that they harbour a love for a forgotten aspect of Albion's modes of expression - the poet at the helm of a song, with one heck of a lot on his mind.
They jitter. Not in the same way that The Futureheads or Franz Ferdinand do, not in a way that fits a tune or a dance like a glove. It's more of an involuntary jerk, a ploy that throws the song off toward the opposite angle at roughly thirty second intervals. It flows horribly, but to their credit sounds like little else as they distinctly, gleefully stamp their signature trick all over each track. If it's intelligent, idea laden indie exercises you're after, look no further than 'English Self Storage', a mini LP made of nothing but. Noting the two most tuneful moments, '21st Century Kasper Hauser' closes things in the same way 'Why We've Become Invisible' started them, with a million strong melodies happening at the same time over erratic drum parts, like various conventional songs battling for space before falling on top of each other. It certainly keeps you on your toes.
They don't rhyme. They try to fit as much prose as is possible without swallowing your own tongue into each bar, throwing out words at a rate of knots. What you'll probably come away with at the end of a listening session with The Playwrights is an impression of a band with something to say, cryptic though most of it is. Case in point: the chorus of the remarkably peculiar 'Movements towards a Paperless Life' repeats the phrase "what this company needs is increased transparency" until it no longer sounds strange. You can imagine how long that would take.
They make for uncomfortable, yet perversely pleasant listening. It focuses on one part of a song for so little a time that it's difficult for you to return the favour with any more diligence, but still, there's so blatantly enough intelligence (if not real a focal point) behind its creation that seven tracks in its company is hardly time wasted.
Artists in this article: The Playwrights
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