There's good reason, it turns out, for that last quality: when singer-guitarist Oliver Ackerman's voice does come to the fore, as on 'In Your Heart' (lifted as a single), it's something of a wet blanket, neither tuneful nor particularly distinctive, and the lyrics when they can be heard seem forgettably banal. Just like their role models, they still make a fetish of volume: check out opening track, 'It Is Nothing,' surely another way of saying 'Isn't Anything,' and it's My Bloody Valentine by any other name: a propulsive psychedelic wash of queasily ascending noise, backwards guitar rush and relentlessly pounding drums, vocals decidedly just another instrument in the mix. Some may mourn the lo-fi caveman racket of before, and on first listen I too was disappointed by this album's relative subtlety, but really Exploding Head does everything the debut did, only better. Well, the basic reference points haven't changed, but Exploding Head scores points over its predecessor for better dynamics, greater clarity, stronger songwriting and more use of light and shade. If those first fifteen songs saw the New York trio obviously in thrall to Psychocandy, Isn't Anything and- to a lesser extent- the Sisters of Mercy circa the 'Reptile House' EP, then Exploding Head is their first true statement of intent, and a chance to show us what they can do with those influences. Exploding Head sees the boys join a grown-up record label (Mute), with a concomitant increase in production values, and ten songs put down in one location, in a matter of weeks. Although really it's the first proper album by the self-styled "New York's loudest band," as their eponymous debut, released on Rocket Girl last year, was a disparate collection of fifteen tracks recorded over a period of five years. Which brings us to A Place To Bury Strangers, an American three-piece with late-80s English scuzz-rock flowing through their veins, and their inevitably feedback-frazzled second long-player. Even Head of David got back together for Supersonic, while many of this year's most feted new records are openly in debt to these bands and their less celebrated, but no less worthy, kin. This year, My Bloody Valentine once more returned to the live stage, more ferocious than ever, and both Loop and Spacemen 3 had their back catalogues polished up and re-released. One reason has been the welcome rediscovery of some of the best and noisiest music of that period: the UK bands that took their cue from the Jesus and Mary Chain's epochal Psychocandy album four years before, and made a point of playing at extreme volume, fusing feedback and noise with three-chord minimalism, and cutting the narcotic haze of psychedelia with a harsh, discordant approach more suitable for soundtracking Thatcher's Britain. In some ways, 2009 has felt like 1989 all over again.
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