Goldsmack

Goldsmack are a trio from an isolated part of Italy, and there is a palpable sense of desolation about the music on this debut EP.

Davide Tebaldi’s guitar, Luca Bagatti’s bass lures you in with pretty conventional riffs, then add a synth for colour. So far, so Sisters of Mercy. A Wild Wild Season has a wonderful languorous rhythm keeping things ticking over but this is Georgia Minelli’s song with her Cave like vocals intertwining with Bagatti’s. ‘Shiver down my spine’ she sings, how apt.

We then come to Rites of Spring and another riff from the book of riffs though its density and relentlessness is hypnotic. Kids with Guns moves into White Stripes territory. It’s a filler, and sets up nicely for closer Of Human Bondage. A song that again has Ms Minelli to the fore with the repetitive sound of (possibly) an album’s scratched runout groove as metronome, with an injection of funereal synths along the way. A terrifically gloomy highlight.

Ostensibly there’s not much new here but Goldsmack have picked and adapted cleverly from their inspirations and created a sound that’s at times dirgey and grim, though oddly playful, in a perverse way. They actually sound as if they could be having a good time, occasionally.