the ettes: look at life again soon

Nothing is more dangerous for a young band than buzz. Listeners inevitably expect the second coming of the New York Dolls or Joy Division, and with a solid first album a band may have nowhere to go but down. Compared with indie powerhouses The Strokes and declared “the band to watch in 2007″, retro beat-punk band The Ettes have a lot to live up to with second release Look At Life Again Soon.

The Ettes have sidestepped the pressure by making a different kind of album. Though they claim the same influences as before – The Ramones, The Rolling Stones and Nancy Sinatra – and once again recorded at London’s famous Toe Rag studios, the NYC-based threesome are leaning more on the ’60s than the late 1970s this time. And, honestly, it’s working for them.

Whereas their debut Shake The Dust often played like Ramones who knew how their instruments worked (certainly not a bad thing), Look At Life Again Soon steps out by combining the frenetic exuberance of early punk with the sweet melodies of harder-edged British Invasion. ‘I Heard Tell’ definitely smacks of The Who’s self-styled ‘maximum R&B’, but Coco Hames’s smoky voice and savage guitar create a sound unique to The Ettes. And unlike most Invasion-era songs, these growling anthems are for the girls. With a male voice ‘I Get Mine’ would be standard mid-’60s misogyny-lite, but in the lungs of a woman it comes across as pure sarcasm.

The Ettes are most impressive when they’re angry. ‘Girls Are Mad’ offers up an early Clash-style drumbeat from Poni Silver and a spitting narrative over Jem Cohen’s feverish bass lines. Hames never quite makes it clear why the girls are mad, but with lines like “I’ve seen it / it’s such a lie that you’ve got to believe it,” you can’t help but think they have every right to be pretty damned pissed off.

It’s only when The Ettes calm down a bit that cracks start to show. With seething guitars kept well in check, some songs cross the line from exciting reference to tired imitation. The band often uses imitation to their advantage throughout the album; ‘To Arms’ boasts a drumbeat straight off Beatles For Sale, while ‘Crown Of Age’ opens with a descending guitar line borrowed from The Kinks’ ‘Till the End of the Day’. These songs twist their source material into something new, whereas songs like ‘Two Shakes’ and ‘Chilled Hidebound Heart’ end up sounding more like obscure covers than original songs.

It’s a testament to the band’s skill that even their weakest songs are quite listenable, but The Ettes are at their best when they infuse their own punk personality into vintage sounds.

[Take Root; September 9, 2008]

Written by: Caitlin Ward

Tags: look at life again soon, the ettes

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 4:15 pm and is filed under albums & EPs, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.