Lovvers - Think Album Review

Read our review for Lovvers album 'Think' released through Wichita Recordings.

Wouldn’t it be great if all albums clocked in at little over a quarter of an hour in total? Now we’re not saying for one minute that there’s anything particularly wrong with wanting to create an hour-long epic of drawn out intensity, or indeed channel a whole plethora of sounds and ideas into one gargantuan monologue, but sometimes less is more. As we become more accustomed to being part of the iPod and MP3 generation; a notion that advocates the use of the “shuffle” and “skip” facilities with curt abandon, wouldn’t it be great if once in a while something came along that rendered said functions as being useless? A record where there was no need to ever concern yourself with such dilemmas because none of the songs were long enough to instigate a feeling of boredom or uneasiness?

Then thank the Lord for ‘Think’, the debut long player – if you can in all honesty call it that – by Nottingham-cum-Leeds four-piece Lovvers. Anyone who’s witnessed the band’s live shows will already be aware that they aren’t ones to outstay their welcome, yet at the same time whether they’re playing for fifteen minutes or (occasionally) slightly longer, the impression lasts way beyond that of much any so-called more musically accomplished and structured outfit you could care to mention.

Not that we’re saying for one minute of course that Lovvers aren’t an exceptional, thought-provoking band; they are in a every sense of the word, and that is what compounds their appeal even further. No doubt some people will just dismiss this as noise, but make no mistake about it, ‘Think’ is a well-balanced album that even though it only contains seven pieces of music in total, flows with all the panache of a healthily tuned estuary that while not sounding like anything else doing the rounds this minute, owes a fine doubt to the US hardcore scene of the late 1980s as Shaun Hencher’s gritty vocal is reminiscent of both Flipper’s Will Shatter or the following decade’s more ambitious Unwound and Justin Trosper.

To break ‘Think’ down into a song-by-song summary would be both laughable and pointless, as this album represents more of an accompanying (and fairly accurate) documentation of those aforementioned live shows. Quite simply, this is music to annoy the neighbours and offend anyone with an inclination to listen to such aural dross as Nickelback or Scouting For Girls.

It’s extreme, pulsating, and over pretty much as soon as it’s begun. But then this is Lovvers, and we wouldn’t expect ‘Think’ to be any other way…UK hardcore never sounded so good – Simply Priceless.

8/10
Dom Gourlay