Blow-Up Alice Jones-Rodgers reviews ‘Melting Pot’.

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Alice Jones-Rodgers reviews ‘Melting Pot’.

Husband and wife Dan and Natalie Webster, who have been stalwarts of Blackpool’s music scene since the mid-2000s with bands such as Sideshow Sirens and The Drop-Out Wives, may have formulated the idea for Blow-Up way before the world going to hell in a handcart, but we dare say it took an event as catastrophic as the pandemic for them to fully realise it. Since late 2020, they have brought us several singles and an eponymous five-track EP, have added a third member, guitarist Howard Mckenzie and, with restrictions lifted, have began to make a sizable impression on the Northwest live circuit. Now, as the curtain falls on a year that wasn’t quite as bad as the one in which the Lo-fi outfit, er ... blew up, comes their debut album, ‘Melting Pot’.

Clocking in at just over half an hour, this gloriously fuzzy, full-throttle blast of scuzzed-up guitars, idiosyncratic percussion and unfettered vocal exorcisms recorded at REC, Blackpool, produced by Shaun Reader (Dü Pig) and housed in full-on Psychedelic, garden gnome sporting artwork by local artist Marcus Bloom is certainly one of the most assured debut albums of 2021 and also one of the most unique. With wonderfully noisy opener ‘Rattle Them Bones’, all propulsive and unwieldy axework, a backbeat that partly sounds like it was recorded whilst tapping a pit of skulls for signs of life and demonic larnyx-shredding vocals, Blow-Up are certain to shake off any cobwebs that might still be lingering from those months of self-isolation, whilst on the following ‘Bodybag’, the trio flex the type of Pop songwriting muscle that always underlaid the best work of The Drop-Out Wives (who can forget such should-be classics as ‘F*ck Love’ from their 2014 album ‘Voting for Gloss’). As with The Drop-Out Wives, it is this mix of the weird and wonderful and intrinsic knowledge of Pop craftsmanship that makes Blow-Up’s ‘Melting Pot’ such an enthralling proposition.

‘Devil’s Eye’ ups the ante yet further, a solitary bugle ushering in a Grungy guitar line reminiscent of Hole’s ‘Violet’ (‘Live Through This’, 1994), before building into dense and slightly unsettling soundscape of inventive percussion from Dan, including some ominous death toll bells; ghostly, atmosphere-enhancing backing vocals courtesy of Louise ‘Peg’ Eccleston; a typically and appropriately weighty bassline from album guest Joey Class (The Senton Bombs) and a sublime guitar solo by Mckenzie. Meanwhile, Natalie’s vocals, here part Courtney Love, part Patti Smith (who’s ‘Ghost Dance’ (‘Easter’, 1978), the overall effect of ‘Devil’s Eye’ is not dissimilar to), have rarely sounded so impassioned.

Continuing Blow-Up’s obvious penchant for the occult is their cover of

Kip Tyler and the Flips’ 1958 (some say proto-Garage, some say proto-Metal) track ‘She’s My Witch’, the low-slung, slow Blues rhythm of the original given a decidedly ‘90s Slacker Rock meets early-Black Sabbath style makeover, replete with growling guitars and eery woodland noises, whilst the song’s insistent central guitar motif in Blow-Up form cannot help but remind us of that in ELO’s ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’ (‘Discovery’, 1979) ... “Grooss!”

Imagine if The Jesus and Mary Chain formed a supergroup with The Kills in order to provide the soundtrack to an obscure and long-forgotten ‘50s B-movie and the driving, one-chord thrash beast that is ‘Souldigger’, a terrifying thrill-ride on an old motorcycle down unlit country backroads at the dead of night, is what we suspect the result might sound like. This wind-in-the-hair euphoria is continued on the equally exhilarating ‘Shredded Leather’, on which Natalie, all ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ (1955) bravado, forcefully declares “I ain’t got no time for fools, like YOOUUU!”

Perhaps the biggest revelation on ‘Melting Pot’ (although there are many) occurs as we get into the spirit of this retro-inflected record by imagining that we are turning over the vinyl (aided by a black CD designed to look like an actual record with actual grooves!) to side B, where we are greeted by ‘I’ve Got the Bug’, a 1950s Doo-wop style number in which Natalie offers up her finest Betty Boop-channelling vocal performance amidst astonishingly faithful period girl-group backing vocals, guitar work and production values.

On an album where light and dark sit side by side in perfect harmony, Dan takes on lead vocal duties for the heavy riffing ‘Waxwork’, a track which returns us to the grimy streets of the band’s native North-west, where the “little fever”-inducing need to “escape the rabble” is achieved by losing yourself “amongst the crackle”. Complimenting Dan’s Thurston Moore-esque vocal delivery on ‘Waxwork’ is the second and equally interesting cover on ‘Melting Pot’, the Natalie-sung ‘Harvest Spoon’, Kim Gordon’s account of the sexism endured whilst Sonic Youth were opening for Neil Young on the 1991 ‘Weld’ tour and originally featured as the opening track on the debut album proper by her side project Free Kitten, 1995’s ‘Nice Ass’. Blow-Up’s interpretation of the brilliantly-titled Godfather of Grunge-baiting ‘Harvest Spoon’ is relatively faithful, but with a slightly faster tempo and some neat wah-wah guitar work from Mckenzie.

‘Waste the Day’, an infectious little gem with playful vocal interplay from Dan and Natalie, is another album highlight, although perhaps we are just delighted that Blow-Up have provided a theme tune to Dan’s legendary

‘Wasted World’ comic strip, which you have seen grace the pages of this very publication since January 2020! If MTV were still in any way down with the kids (and as long as Dan kept regaling Eighth Day readers with his tales from Ugleigh), we would by now be campaigning for them to commission a ‘Wasted World’ TV series, thus providing Generation Y with their equivalent of Generation X’s ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’ (1993-1997). We can see it now! Really, who could resist a theme tune with lyrics such as “You know we’re in it forever, These boxes keep us together, And we’ve got to get out, Wasted world”?!

Bringing ‘Melting Pot’ to the climax that such an exciting and eclectic blend of fun, frolics and Lo-fi experimentation deserves is ‘The Bear’, a joyously chaotic, all-bleeping, mad as a box of caniforms, Psychedelic wig-out with frantic Rap-like vocals from Natalie and hints of The Sugarcubes and Bikini Kill thrown in for good measure. Feast upon this first full-length offering from Blow-Up, because in a world that now seems to constantly teeter on the brink of apocalypse, an album as consistently stirring as ‘Melting Pot’ was exactly the sort of escapism that we all needed.

‘Melting Pot’ is out now.

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