Anyway, Wot Gorilla?’s new EP is a shot at the increasingly popular, and pretty hard to name genre, that for the purposes of ease, we’ll call tempo-change post-punk: there’s floating vocals mixed with shouts, noodly guitars lines mixed with distorted riffs, and a lot of disorientating changes in time-signature.
Whilst this effort ain’t half-bad, it is sadly whole-sale stealing of their peers’ thunder, and it’s the easy comparisons to these contemporaries (see: Meet Me In St. Louis, Tubelord, Colour) that sees ‘New Arrival’ fall unfortunately a tad flat; this is nothing fans of the genre (it is a genre) won’t have heard before, and seems a little generic in the wake of said bands’ original stellar output.
It’s fairly to simple to pin-point the EP’s main flaw, Wot Gorilla? have painted themselves into a corner by being too fixated on chopping between tempos, sticking to this regimen so rigidly has lead the band into forgetting how to write legitimately enjoyable songs.
Listening to the EP is a little like Shock Aversion Therapy in that every time a really promising moment in a song occurs – the slower vocal-heavy sections in particular are the most interesting –it's almost immediately usurped by an predictable change in pace, and an inevitable shout with a heavier guitar.
Extending these catchier parts into full songs would serve WG? well; evident in ‘Shoes For Traction’ being, by far, the EP’s highlight, and also being the track that strays the least from a more formal song structure. Loosing the extraneous, minute long, reverse-vocal/feedback interlude might be an idea too, it’s weird, and on a four track EP there's really not the time to waste with an interlude like this.
As above, Wot Gorilla? are a band with some real promise, but clearly a band born out of too many ideas and influences happening all at once, and an urge to keep live audiences interested. Saying this though there is clear promise here and once the guys settle into their sound we should be hearing something a little more refined.
3/5
Pick up a copy of the EP from Idle Hands Club
Review by Andy Swain