Powerplant

***After last year’s Stump Soup cassette, Powerplant is back with a sharp five tracker. On every release Powerplant mutates, changes and rotates their sound and on this EP it’s no different. The rigid march of drum machines is now more determined and powerful than ever. Grass serves as their fatalist manifesto against burning daylight spending time fruitlessly. Like an intrusive thought or a ghost, the theme of time passing, barges into every song, calling to action. Powerplant, like a converted believer, is here to guide you through. “It gets worse before it gets worse”, says bandleader Theo Zhykharyev, “I waited forever for things to get better and a perfect time to put out these songs, but judging from the trajectory of events - this is as good as it’s going to get.” With the same necessity to get out and make up for lost time, the EP opens its gates with title track “Grass” - a force of nature that charges into a dizzying riff, bridging into a crooning verse with a pompous backing. Powerplant’s catchy sensibilities and affection for intricate song structures is at the forefront with a hint of weirdness that is yet to come. "Broodmother" is like the march of an evil and twisted army with military drums, distorted bass hook and sinister vocals. "Walk Around - Hang My Head" comes over like a mid 80’s 4 track Stranglers demo with a vocal that chops and snarls with an odd twang to it. "3 Medallions" is a brief instrumental interlude that leads into final cut "Beautiful Boy" which is the most straightforward song - but isn’t straight forward at all. It starts like it’s going to be an 80’s synth pop gem but ends up like a ghostly version of early Wire or art punks that make every second count with some different happening, knowing that this might be their only ever release. Luckily, for us that isn’t the case for Powerplant. Pressed on orange vinyl.