AERIAL SALAD
R.O.I
(Venn Records)
9/10
Madchester Punx Aerial Salad returns with a savage melange of all the musical styles that once made and makes this nation of ours a true musical thoroughbred. The infectiously antagonistic ‘R.O.I’ is the trio’s second full-length release, and they come out swinging and swaying with the pavement-scraping opener ‘Rottin’ n Shakin’. The cut picks up Mark E Smith’s still smouldering torch and lobs it on the barely glowing ashes of a bootleg Britpop barbeque. Just as you let your guard down, the song explodes while lovingly sticking to its futile dodgy mattress smell, texture and ear-bashing stains. Next up is the realism over likes, clicks and secondary love single ‘The Same 24 Hours (As Beyonce)’ before the megaphone delivery and Foxton bass line of the restrained anger that is ‘Tied To Pieces Of Paper’. The Rock throttle gets pushed to the metal as ‘MDRN LVN’ speeds across the genre zebra crossing while ‘They All Lied To Me’ has a prospect of filling summer festival tents with flares, pogoing and hurled pints as Seattle and Manchester gloriously collide.
The gobby-yob punch of ‘Big Business’ gets overtaken by the Indie pair of ‘As The World Eats Itself’ and a spirit-crushing ‘All Your Dreamin’. The album has the resonance of a shoegazing funeral, an uninsured Uber, late-night chippie, and heavily cut amphetamine snorted off a dirty key in one bed high rise somewhere between The Inbetweeners and Shameless Towers. The spiked candy floss fire of ‘Do You Like Flowers Son’ and what could never have been anthem ‘Chances’ call last orders. Finally, a room spinning ‘Telekom Five’ slips, trips, and slams the lid down on one of the albums of 2024. Stay healthy, stay free and order the salad.
For more Aerial salad Information,
head over to https://aerialsalad.co.uk/