Loverman – Human Nurture EP/Mini album
These well-connected Londoners come crawling from beneath the same Goth-tinted rock as Kasms and the improbably-titled An Experiment On A Bird In The Air Pump. They count The Big Pink and Comanechi’s Akiko Matsuura as a friend and fan and love all things (early) Nick Cave.
With a band name possibly drawn from Let Love In, Loverman lurch and bawl with a sleazy sludgecore touch, recalling the lightest jet-black heroics of Clockcleaner or Pissed Jeans. Current calling-card ‘Crypt Tonight’ is a gruff, bass-driven psychotic rocker, as well as commendable exercise in punning. The altogether less pleasant ‘Gasp’ is full of crunching guitar and pained screaming, whereas ‘Shoot The Pig’ reincarnates Cobain’s most tortured howl atop dirgeful chord progression, slow-march bass and riffing flourishes.
Human Nurture (oft listed as Human Nature EP) is slowed funereally on ‘Barb’, which gravels along disinterestedly in a Cohen-esque manner to the odd interjection of reverb. The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster’s ‘Rise Of The Eagles’ is instantly brought to mind on EP closer ‘Miracle’, purposefully underwritten all the while with Bleach-era grunge strains.
Loverman can only be criticised for being unsubtle, but all things considered, that’s hardly criticism, for Human Nature is as raw as it should be, no more, no less.