Bluebottle Kiss - Doubt Seeds
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Bluebottle Kiss pay sly tribute to their musical heroes.
Though this latest Bluebottle Kiss album could have fitted on to a single disc, the fact that two recording sessions produced different feels moved the band to split it into a double disc. A good thing too, since this is easily their most ambitious effort to date and frankly it’s an effort to atke in one sitting. It’s 20 tracks are designed to highlight the music that’s shaped the band’s moving force, Jamie Hutchings. So, buried in these original tunes are homages to (as the cover itself says) Tom Waits, Neil Young, John Coltrane, Sonic Youth and more. You could hazard some guesses – Neil Young in The Women are an Army, The Stooges in Your Mirror is a Vulture, Lou Reed in Harold Holt – but you may be hard pressed to work out which is which, because it’s not often obvious. Yet, with no guidebook to help you, you fall back on one thing – this is a guitar band that doesn’t play it safe. In that sense, if there is just one band they approximate, it’s Sonic Youth. It’s a notion that crops up in Dream Audit, Nova Scotia and several other places here, wherever there’s an involving collision of chaos and intricacy. But, however you listen to it, this look-back could be a defining moment for Bluebottle Kiss