This is hardcore. Everything about 'Turbo' screams US indie hardcore circa 1982 from its bare bones productions to the screeched slightly out of breath vocals to its hand drawn cover. If you were lucky to catch short life US band the Wives when they were around, then you are heading in a similar direction with Sailboats are White.

On first listen 'Turbo' sounds something of a mess, but when you sit down and take a good listen to it you'll 'get it'. This is music made out of passion and desperation with a wry wit and also...a drum machine. Yes, hardcore punk with a drum machine. This makes for an unusual twist, although this has has happened, as songwriter Kevin Wright has described it, simply because of "our drummer flaking out after a few shows." This electronic sound, however, gives a real post punk/hardcore feel to Sailboats Are White, making songs like 'Led Eye' sound a little like Joy Division which of course is never a bad thing.

With fantastic song-writing on the likes of 'Congratulations on the Goddamn Cherries' and "It's Exactly 5 Seconds from Here to the Door, I'll Give You Two' it is clear that this band come with a real sense of self, tongue in cheek style and also believe 110% in what they are doing.

While Sailboats Are White are never going to be playing arenas they are not meant to, and would be absolutely wasted on the masses. Sailboats Are White have, however, the potential to have a glorious career with a cult following. On songs such as 'S.A.W.' which sounds exactly how you would imagine a song of that title would sound, and sensory over-loader 'Hand It to the Devil', it is clear this band could really matter.

I just hope enough people are subjected to their brand of noise pollution. If noisy, experimental, heartfelt indie rock at it's most extreme is what you floats your boat, or is what is missing in your life, then I implore you to seek this band out and make the effort to catch them when they come over to England to terrorize us in person. I am sure it will be a pleasure.

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Sailboats Are White: TURBO!

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Thomas Ferguson

So there's this new band signed to Poptones and they play guitars and... no wait, come back! Did I say play guitars? My bad... they pummel guitars. They play guitars in the same way that lawnmowers 'play' grass. And they're from Hamilton in Canada rather than some grotty hovel in London. Plus, they cite The MC5 as an influence by actually taking their hardcore ethics into their music rather than by just wearing a T-shirt. Oh, and they're also an electro band, although only in the same way that The Locust are an electro band – i.e. they've got a synth but it probably weeps in fear before it gets all the scuzzed-up anti-riffs torn out of it. I know, I didn't think McGee had it in him either.

Sailboats Are White, then, are a band that it's easier to stare and gawp in awe at than run away from, and they're all the better for it. Which is why their album Turbo! comes across not like a Goodies tribute act, as the hastily-scrawled scene of a giant cat invading a bustling metropolis on the front cover suggests, but rather like a cross between Big Black, Martini Henry Rifles and falling into a volcano full of piranhas. Granted, their brand of synth-guitar bludgeonry doesn't always work, especially when it foolishly lets the pace drop – the rage in 'Mutiny Disease' sounds a bit forced amongst the distorted fury of the rest of the album, and their extended version of the "I love you, you love me" song from Barney The Big Heinously Annoying Purple Dinosaur that closes the album is worth a miss. But when they're getting rock and roll right, they're getting it gloriously wrong.

For instance, rather thrillingly for yours truly, opening track 'Congratulations On The Goddamn Cherries' bursts into a bastard amalgamation of noise after a minute, like the disco-punk of Carter USM fronted by the 'singer' from Cutting Pink With Knives. Fucking. Yes.

So, for the most part, Turbo! is a violent, virile, viral racket that sounds in some places like Trencher produced by Nick Zinner ('It's Exactly Four Seconds From Here To The Door, I'll Give You Two'), at others like electroclash had it been in love with shredding ('S.A.W.'), and more often like a bath swallowing a drum machine coupled with Andy Falkous swallowing a microphone ('Hand It To The Devil' – don't try this at home, kids!). But overall, SrW sound like any music would if you channelled all your fury into it, thwacked it out of yr instruments as hard and fast as possible yet still wanted people to dance along.

And you will dance, oh yes - resistance is useless.

Rating:

Growing up in an inhospitable environment can do funny things to a man. If any extra evidence was ever needed to justify this nurture vs. nature claim then look no further than Turbo, the debut long player from Canadian professional headf*ckers Sailboats Are White. Hailing from the small city of Hamilton, an hour away from the nation's largest city, Toronto, the place is awash with a repugnant sea of crack, alcohol and casual violence. Whilst it may not sound like the best of areas to reside in, such a spot always seems to inspire fascinating art, and Turbo is living proof of such.

For all the abrasiveness throughout Turbo, there are a couple of moments of relative calm, with 'S.A.W' and particularly 'Led Eye', complete with its forceful keys and sing along "woos", having all the hallmarks of future dancefloor favourites. These are times when you can't help but think that if the band are given the backing of a certain image obsessed British weekly, they could soon be embraced by the same swarm of retro-fashionistas that not long ago took Test Icicles to their hearts.

Sailboats Are White - Turbo

(Poptones)

Canada has always seemed like a fairly safe country to live in, if a small portion of Michael Moore's film 'Bowling for Columbine' is to be believed. A population of passive, happy people, but like most countries it has its shady areas, such as Hamilton, an hours drive outside of Toronto. With violence on the streets, and a thriving drug culture, it's also responsible for throwing up proto-punk's latest nihilists, Sailboats Are White.

Mixing the cold industrial-chill of Big Black, the vintage hardcore aggression of Black Flag, with the stream of consciousness bile of Mark E. Smith, Turbo is thirty odd minutes of fiery, take no prisoners intense rock n' roll that will make them the black sheep of the new rave movement.

Besides all the intense numbers, Sailboats Are White also wear their 'child of the 80's' influence prominently on their sleeves with numbers such as 'Led Eye', 'Mutiny Disease' and 'The Sex-Drive Thieves' sounding suspiciously like a speeded up Human League, had they been fronted by an angry Alsatian.

The production is left bare bones and gritty enough to light matches from; vocals are often muffled, distorted or indecipherable (possibly a good thing), whilst the guitars are tiny and piercing, cutting through the mechanical processed beats like a chain-saw through a sand castle.

A debut packed with razor-sharp, corrosive numbers that will sandblast the cobwebs from any complacent new-rave scenester's consciousness.

10/23/2006

Mike Caulfield

http://www.myspace.com/sailboatsrwhite

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