There are many miserable, unavoidable truths in life that unfold as you grow older. Hangovers go from easily shaken-off headaches to soul-destroying, multi-day nightmares. Macaulay Culkin’s character in Home Alone stops seeming like the coolest kid in the world and instead starts to come off as an irritating little shit that deserves a paint can or two to the face. And, maybe saddest of them all, a lot of hardcore bands will lose the fire in their belly and start making nondescript, middle of the road music for all the other reformed punks whose tinnitus won’t let them enjoy screaming any more.
Back in 2008, The Computers were a noisy, fire-breathing rock ‘n’ roll/hardcore hybrid that fought their way out of Exeter via their Fierce Panda mini-album ‘You Can’t Hide From The Computers’. Sitting uncomfortably alongside similarly abrasive early releases by Gallows and The Ghost Of A Thousand, The Computers’ debut release gnashed and howled along with the best of the British hardcore scene. Debut full-length ‘This Is The Computers’ followed suit in 2011, expanding the band’s sound whilst losing none of the bite, being easily comparable in style to US prog punks Fucked Up in its ability fuse raging noise with a garage rock sensibility and swagger.
It was on 2013’s sophomore album ‘Love Triangles Hate Squares’ where the band’s sound made a sudden leap away from the anger of those earlier releases into something far more polished and mainstream. Gone were Alex Kershaw’s mangled howls, instead replaced with a shockingly melodic croon. But it wasn’t just a smoothing off of the vocals that marked a shift – the band’s entire sound had completely morphed into something resembling The Jam or Elvis Costello. Bands change, this is inevitable, but in the space of one release The Computers managed to leap from Black Flag into The Style Council, and though their knack for writing snappy tunes was intact, for all intents and purposes it might as well have been a completely different band.
All of this brings us to the band’s new EP, ‘Want The News? Here’s The Blues’. Any hopes The Computers might have rediscovered their former bile are dashed within a few short seconds of the opening title track. After a clangy, post-punk inspired opening riff, the song quickly turns into something that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Franz Ferdinand record. Whether or not that’s a bad thing will depend on the mileage you get out of Scotland’s indie dance stalwarts, but from where we’re standing it’s certainly not a pleasing turn of events.
Things don’t pick up any more from there, with both of the remaining original tracks sticking to the same basic formula – mid-paced, toothless soul, swathed in uninspired riffs and competent but flat vocals. The most interesting moment on the EP comes in a cover of Devo’s seminal ‘Whip It’, but even this fails to inspire as it’s an almost note-for-note replica of the original, bringing no new flavour or identity to the song. We almost reduced ourselves to tears imagining the fun The Computers of old could have had ripping the song to shreds, alas that’s a version of the band that doesn’t exist any more, so we can but dream.
The Computers’ massive sea-change is clearly not an accident and as they’re now on their second major release featuring this revamped, mod-pop sound it’s also obviously not an erroneous blip on their trajectory. Many bands manage to shed the rougher edges of their youth and still retain the vital energy that gives them their appeal, but The Computers just aren’t one of those bands. There are likely plenty of folks out there who’ve embraced this new style and welcome the band’s new identity, but it still doesn’t reduce the sting of knowing we’ve lost another great punk band to the cruel mistress that is ‘growing up’.
JAMES LEE