David Cronenberg's Wife - Bluebeard's Room (Blang 2008)

How to write a review of David Cronenberg's Wife's debut album without some silly puns? Hmmm, if the possibility is in existenz, I'd like to know about it. Maybe after a naked lunch, it'll crash into my inbox with a history of violence... This album is full of eastern promise.

Right, silliness aside, hyberbole aside, adjective-o-meter off, this album is awesome. Simple really. It's dark, poetic, disturbing and moving. Almost like a fiery marriage between Mark E. Smith and Jeffrey Lewis, singer Tom Mayne's half-crooned, half-chanted words are full of slices of macabre lives and small-town paranoia. From the tribal throb of 'Coming Down to Your Hometown' to the evil rush of 'My Best Friend's Going Out (With a Girl I Like)', there is a dark humour at place on the tracks. Poignant, meaningful and brimming with passion. Surf guitars intermingle with pumping synths and a powerful drum throb. This is a great debut album, never dull and always inspiring. There's gallows humour on 'Harry the Morgue', 60's spy pastiche on 'Runaway Pram'- surely the likeliest theme for 'Quantum of Solace' next to a Joe Cornish pastiche. The outsider feeling that permeates the album is filled with emotive clarity and erudite scathing humour.

Simply said, this album is powerful. Where else will you find something as funny and dark as David Cronenberg's Wife. Suddenly the band moniker makes sense, the sense of humour similar to Davey boy's twisted askew of the world. This is definitely a dead ringer of the album of the year, leaving me rabid with shivers, leaving me shivering like the fly... Whoops, there I go again! Four out of five methinks, and an extra point to make up for the bad puns!