Comanechi – Crime Of Love
One half of London-based Comanechi’s fearsome twosome is Akiko, the cutesy drummer who found fame this year as The Big Pink’s drummer and retains stick duty for this long-time-coming debut, as well as retaining her role as front woman for the arty noise-collective Pre. Her partner in crime, Simon, provides crunching punk-rock guitar, occasionally bringing the bass to boot.
Crime Of Love is permeated by strong melodies and varied tempos ranging from a menacing gothic plod through to frantic and raw crescendos, often all in the same song. Akiko’s otherworldly and shrill vocal drifts, backs itself and incants atonally. Her lyrics are frequently filthy; see the thinly veiled ode to her cat that is “My Pussy” as an example as well as its reprise, “R.O.M.P (Revenge Of My Pussy)”.
Their shtick is one-dimensional, but is so with interest. The vocal-over-rhythm-into-crashing-guitar-work-into-bridge-then-repeat model is well-hammered and also lovingly shambolic as this structure regularly overloads what is assumedly cheap equipment. Exciting, teasing grunge riffs and head-banging stoner-rock punctuate sludgecore-like reverb levels and heavily distorted progressions on “Mesmerising Fingers”.
It took four years to complete, is over in 25 minutes and the word is that work has already commenced on the follow up. Here’s hoping it doesn’t take another four years, as that would really be a crime of love.