Visually and aurally offensive in equal measure: writing as flaccid as a lit turd

Thank you, NME, for Tim Jonze's Lightning Bolt review. This was printed circa 2006, and I think I only have 4 editions from that year. Most of them have some sort of reasoning behind their longevity in my files: for instance, one has a full-page Two Gallants review, and this one has a Lightning Bolt review. Yes, a Lightning Bolt review! In (modern) NME! Of course, there's no time wasted in informing the unsuspecting member of the general public who's picked up this magazine that they're different. I'm not sure if it ranks up there with Gay Against You reviews which end "...but everyone else seemed to enjoy it", but it is inspirationally insipid. Apparently all their songs blend into one, and apparently wearing earplugs at (noise rock) gigs is like watching porn blindfolded, or masturbating under local anaesthetic. Thank latter day Guardian scribe Tim Jonze for these analogies. I seem to recall from other NMEs the frivolity of our Tim covering Glastonbury when there was no Glastonbury (reporting a feature story of cow and field related frolics) and dressing up as an emo kid (half the words in this post could be italicised, btw) only to realise he wasn't going to get picked on by drunks and subsequently get drunk himself. Yeah, take that, journalism! Where was Neil Kulkarni when Justice vs Simian's We Are Your Friends came out? Anyway, get some of this Lightning Bolt review down yr earholes. But don't tell Brian Chippendale.


























In case you cannae read it:

Tim Jonze
NME, 10 June 2006

Lightning Bolt,
The Luminaire, London
Sunday, May 28

Tense, nervous headache? Why not go and see The World's Scariest, Loudest Most Fucked-up Noise-rock Duo (TM). That'll cure it!

It's an hour before Lightning Bolt are due onstage and NME is suffering from a terrible migraine. Let us explain the ramifications of this. When we're having a migraine, even a tender embrace from NME's girlfriend feels like 17,000 stampeding woolly mammoths are raping my brain. And now we have to endure The World's Scariest, Loudest, Most Fucked-up Noise-rock Duo (TM). For what seems like about 17 weeks. Great.

Lightning Bolt seem to be on pretty frightening form tonight. They forget to put us on the guest list (scary!), set up their kit in the middle of the crowd (revolutionary!) and mutter something incomprehensible through their broken microphone (yikes!). Then, they open their set with 'Dracula Mountain'. Ha! Get the joke? As if anyone could actually tell what song they're playing - they all sound identical; like your innards are being sexually molested by the National Grid. It's a series of increasingly painful squeals and electroconvulsive therapy that somehow mutate themselves into one long, grotesque, punishing rhythm. If you could hear yourself think, you might say, "This is what The Velvet Underground's 'Sister Ray' would have sounded like if they weren't such play-it-safe wusses."

You might also think how it must be pretty annoying being The World's Scariest, Loudest, Most Fucked-up Noise-rock Duo (TM) and having to play gigs for an audience politer than your average Keane gig. Honestly! Down in "the moshpit" people are nodding their heads and adjusting their thick-rimmed spectacles. Other people are wearing earplugs. Earplugs! Isn't that like watching porm while blindfolded? Or masturbating under local anaesthetic? Why on earth would you wear hearing protection to see a band whose only purpose is to deafen you?

Anyway, none of this really matters because, as Lightning Bolt continue to bash out their collection repulsive noises, the electric bolts of shredded noise start leaping from their guitar and drumkit and begin to remould NME's brain, removing the migraine bits and leaving the nice bits that think about stuff like ice-cream and Darjeeling tea in the process. And then the migraine completely evaporates! Which means that Lightning Bolt have actually sucked the pain directly out of our brain, fed it through their FX pedals and blasted our agony straight out across Kilburn High Road tube station. You certainly don't get that kind of thing with The Kooks. So we go outside and, hey, we're cured! Which means NME now has the brainspace to wonder: "Did we just see the future of subversive, mid-mangling noise? Or was it just two very strange men playing the same song over and over again very loudly for the benefit of some middle-class graphic design students?" And we just can't tell.

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(Plenty of things you could comment on. For now - I've just downloaded iTunes and am setting about filling my iPod with The Fall. Said iPod is currently adorned with a sticker of Bulgarian footballer Daniel Borimov, circa World Cup 2008, because it was the best thing I could find. So... comment to follow later, on a review that misses the point of Lightning Bolt completely and shows an immense lack of preparation, yet does well to include some semblance of story - loud, the people are funny, I had a headache.)