Royal Mountain Records (label)
05 January 2022 (released)
05 January 2022
From Zack Starkey and Jason Bonham to Jakob Dylan, all the way down to … erm James McCartney, Pixie Geldof and any number of Gallagher sac-spew, popular culture is festooned with a litany of offspring (inepotism?) who turn their ‘creative’ hands to ‘I’m doing what Mommy and Daddy do/did, it’s in the blood, innit?!’ Juries are still presiding over the verdict (and eventual sentencing) on several cultural crimes.
With Ultra Q (named after the Japanese science-fiction mind-twisting television series) we have Jacob Armstrong, youngest spawn of Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong. ‘So far so nepotistic’ I hear you decry. But wait, come back. Having already released the EP ‘We’re starting to get along’ in 2019 and last year’s long-player ‘In a cave in a video game’ this is a unit that’s gathering apace and making the right noises.
This particular apple hasn’t fallen ‘too’ far from the tree, taking a few leaves out of Père Armstrong’s kvetchbook: technicolour-pop, coruscating chorus-punk, mournful melodies and jaunty jangle-rock and adding fiery, wiry, fizzy-goth moves. Artfully augmented by siblings Enzo and Chris Malaspina and Kevin Judd this Cali-four tet (produced by Martin Cooke) deliver six more sucker-punches to the sensory systems.
[Rupert] ‘Pupkin’ is the titular sinister sad-sack sleb-stalker in Scorsese’s maligned at the time (now naturally rendered a masterpiece) 1982’s ‘The King of Comedy’. That film’s sense of misguided malevolence masquerading as meek machinations is captured here in spindly, wiry, melancholic form reminiscent of the much missed The Rakes.
‘It’s permanent’ is a superior slice of cavernous-dubterranea. Thundering bass guitar snakes and shakes its groove to the fringes, the fray, the final boundary before the action begins (or ends) featuring a chorus to cry, sigh and die for.
‘Bowman’ and ‘Handheld’ are cut from a similar cloth as the early millennium’s slew of post-post-punk puppets (Bloc Party; The Strokes), mimicking Andy Gill-uminated choppy guitars and jerky XTCisms, with Armstrong’s plaintive cries from the gut saving them from outright po-mo pastiche.
The closing ‘Get yourself a friend’ has a Joey (Pixies) Santiago-like riff that reinforces the controlled chaos that surrounds it. A tightly clenched grip on the windpipe of ailing companionship and fading, failing memories. The past sinking down a dwindling think-hole.
