On hearing Wet Nuns’ name for the first time, thoughts are no doubt crossing your mind of some self-important hipster band, professing to be lots of styles, just playing what they like and all the other cliches. Visions of slash-neck short sleeves and tiny woollen hats flood your thoughts, the possibility of mocking another group of worthless fame-chasers growing ever more intoxicating.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The music on display here is rough, lively rock, played from the heart and groin, exactly the way it should be. Dredged from the unfinished pints in the worst bars in the movies, this EP’s 10.10 flies past in a gutter-scented blizzard of rot. Making an extremely impressive racket for a two-piece, the badness promised by previously released title track Broken Teeth is well delivered. Rasping, slovenly guitar mates bareback with unwashed drums, the vocals sounding for all the world like Danzig’s rotgut cousin, 50’s slapback pushing the old school dials to maximum.
All The Young Girls calls to mind, in this reviewer at least, Bleach-era Nirvana trying their hand at rock and roll, all bouncing rhythms and lasciviousness. Our protagonists’ declaration that his house is a honey pot for young women fits the vibe of the music rather well, his lap evidently quite the location.
Feast is over impossibly quickly, all curled lip and double-tracked guitar. Sounding like late nights in the back of a rusted truck, I must confess to being unable to decipher a single word. This takes nothing away from the overall feel of what’s going on, and in the context of the EP it hardly seems pressing, though it would be grand to know what’s going on.
Highlight of the EP is Laura, a gentle hymn to the attractiveness of girls in bands. Gossamer wordplay such as ‘I see that lady on the stage/she’s not too pretty and she’s not a good age…is she hot or do the lights play a trick?/she’s not good lookin’ but she sure plays good music’ identify Wet Nuns as romantics for the modern age, blushing at the notion of a woman. The final minutes of the EP are played out through broken fuzz breaks and octave-heavy riffing, before the chorus brings matters to a close.
Satisfyingly raw, Broken Teeth is the sound of rough, new, outdoor intimacy. Not groundbreaking, or intending to be, this is a hayride of whiskey and leathery hands, played with conviction by people taken with the form. Whether Wet Nuns will go on to release a great jazz record or branch out into dubstep is immaterial-they are playing what they love to play, and you should share in that with them.
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