Corporate Records – Official Site
London four piece Remodel are a pleasingly rough around the edges outfit.
The band fire out a melodic post punk framework that careers into riling chorus’ which lead singer Leigh Swinn spits forth. Swinn’s insitantly polemic couplets deal with crushing domesticity and political charged anger. It’s an urgent sound that recals Gang of Four, PIL and elements of Blur‘s fine critique of the British routine: Modern Life is Rubbish. Sadly that’s not a noise one is likely to hear in the mainstream these days.
Remodel’s recently released album, Statues, which is available as “a pay what you want for it” release, below. It’s sleeve depicts four besuited blokes with their eyes firmly fixed on the burning rubble ashes of London’s Trafalgar Square. It includes the stomping opener “Sunday” that reels on the sofa, hypnotised by endless hours of TV and filled with the dread of another potential week of drugery in a job you hate, while spirralling guitar licks and slogans pour forth ‘another murder mystery on the TV its just all I see, its just you and me.’ ‘Limited’ is delivered with the playful jauntiness of a conspiracy theorist on another after hours rant in the pub. While the more down tempo “Alone With You” depicts a dexiterity, as cascading licks embrace a shivering vocal that clutches a loved one close amongst the raucuas crowd. While closer and title track? “Life Statues” tumbles with all the energy of classic post punk almost Ballardian prose is delivered with the feverish precision of a man possessed (‘Sometimes they stand like statues with me/sometimes they say the same things.‘)
Remodel aren’t breaking the model, but their bashing it into their own images, its not polished or pretty, its the ugly kinda beautiful truth of modern living.
