His Lordship: Bored Animal
(Psychonaut Sounds)
LP | CD | DL
Out now
Returning for their second album, His Lordship fire through 38 minutes of full throttle fuzzed-up garage rock, leaving you battered and begging for more.
4.5 out of 5.0 stars
Beware a bored animal. Its mind wanders in search of some unknown prey, a game, a shot at something to break the monotony of a caged existence. Through blasts of fuzz-fuelled rhythms, yelps, lightning strike guitars and primordial drums, His Lordship pounce. On the title track, opening one of THE garage-rock albums of the year, singer James Walbourne prowls through a weary and jaded life. Casting frustrated glances around at the simple everyday situations that find him caged, he seeks escape, finding it through the crunching attack that he and drummer Kris Sonne muster up. And what a blast they mould it into.
With the title track setting the tone, they let loose a sonic barrage, a trio of songs that, if you have not yet fallen at the feet of the Lords, will have you writhing and itching for no escape. Marc-Andre Léclerc sees them released, out of the boredom and into the sky, a ballerina in the sky, as they sing, free. An ode to the Canadian climber who lost his life in pursuit of his passion, the song pulsates with a desire to take flight, to feel alive with ambition for self-realisation. That they spin the song out over such an infectious groove adds to the appeal, like The Knack out of control on cheap speed.
After the darkly delicious Old Romantic, a song of the night and the shadows, this deadly duo hit you suddenly with one of the jewels of the whole album: Johnny Got No Beef. Just four songs in, and it is clear that they are running the saturated gauntlet, their sound filtered through the ripped speakers of their fellow Muswell Hill boy Dave Davies, but this one brings such a more melodic melody that you can do nothing but let it bury itself deep into your subconscious. It’s like a lost Shelley-penned Buzzcocks’ hit left to decay on the studio floor, encrusted with years of lager and tobacco ash. Hit repeat, repeat, repeat.
While they batter your ears, these two have been around and paid their dues; they know how to keep you on the hook, let you think that there is a possibility of respite. They also know their weird and wonderful British storytelling psych and just how to wield it into the shape they need. Can you imagine what would have happened if the bastard son of Lux Interior and Mark E. Smith had got hold of The Pretty Things’ S.F. Sorrow? You need no longer wonder. In Derek E. Fudge, we have the answer.
Continuing their fuzzed- and fired-up hi-energy racket, the duo fly through the flip side with the same fervour that they have drenched us in up to now. Downertown adds a great dose of gonzo-punk, spiralling guitars that rise and drop, spinning into the oblivion of forgotten streets before 12-12-21 comes in with nostalgic lyrics, all space invaders and cooling towers, a crushing density of distortion that would have the very Mark Arm salivating.
Weirdo In The Park sprinkles some more spiky new-wave juts into things, and The Sadness Of King Kong delivers a pathos in the lyrics that the unhinged rhythm simply cannot disguise. Yet all this is simply paving the way for the late-album standout of I Fly Planes Into Hurricanes; explosive and primal, they unleash an unholy sonic battering, full-on ’77 classic New York-meets-London punk crashing into flames somewhere over the Atlantic. And so, after being left beaten, bereft of inhibition, they depart, leaving us to float on the calmer waters of album closer Gin And Fog. There we drift, awaiting shore, to pick ourselves up and start again all over.
His Lordship tour dates:
6.11 Edinburgh – Bongo Club
7.11 Glasgow – Ivory Black
10.11 Sheffield – Yellow Arch
11.11 Newcastle – Cluny
12.11 Manchester – Deaf Institute
14.11 London – 229
15.11 Brighton – Hope and Ruin
16.11 Nottingham – Bodega
17.11 Bristol – Exchange
18.11 Winchester – Railway Inn
21.11 Norwich – Arts Centre
Tickets go on sale 10am Thursday 26 June and are available from: www.hislordship.net/shows
His Lordship are online, on Facebook, X, Instagram, and YouTube.
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Words by Nathan Whittle. Find his Louder Than War archive here.
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