Savages #4 - Silence Yourself

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Savages, a band written about by approximately 80% of music blogs over the past 24 hours I am sure. I'm joining in because the news announced yesterday was pretty darn excellent. Their debut album Silence Yourself will be released on 6th May (via Matador and their own Pop Noire) and we've also been treated to a taster from it in the form of the frankly amazing "She Will". (I won't repeat the track-listing and further details - if you want that head to Pitchfork).

"She Will" is a song that's been a staple of the bands live show the past year or so. It's a sentiment to the bands initial brilliance that the songs they started off with make up a vast majority of the album. I've included a picture of the set-list from their show at The Shacklewell Arms last May, twelve months on and all of these tracks will have now see the light of day ("She Will" scrawled out on the set but was played as a riotous conclusion that hot, barmy night). It's quite unusual I think to have so few (if any) initial tracks discarded but I suppose that's one of the things that have made Savages stand out since their debut last January, their quality.

The recorded version of "She Will" is slicker than we've heard from their recorded output before with Gemma's shimmering, sheening guitar texture at the fore but it doesn't lack for intensity or emotion as Jehn's shrieking vocals come to a furious conclusion amongst punishing backing. Assertive, brutal and brilliant, "She Will" is Savages' calling card.

I'm not one for copy and paste but I do love the statement posted to the bands website:

SAVAGES is not trying to give you something you didn’t have already, it is calling within yourself something you buried ages ago, it is an attempt to reveal and reconnect your PHYSICAL and EMOTIONAL self and give you the urge to experience your life differently, your girlfriends, your husbands, your jobs, your erotic life and the place music occupies in your life. Because we must teach ourselves new ways of POSITIVE MANIPULATIONS, music and words are aiming to strike like lightning, like a punch in the face, a determination to understand the WILL and DESIRES of the self.

Make sure you pre-order the CD / Vinyl via Savages own site - initial orders on clear vinyl.