Sealings – I'm A Bastard

Moody, minimalist, mal-illuminated… well yes, we may have been travelled this way before. Yet however derivative such disenfranchised narratives can appear, there’s something about this Brighton trio’s uncompromisingly-titled debut LP that suggests something beyond a week spent in a bunker with nothing for sustenance bar early Cure and Cabaret Voltaire. Raw contours, evident in opening track My Boyfriend’s Dead, a single from 2013 that sets the mood, leads us down the stairs. And whether deploying banshee guitar or brooding synth, drum machine or live percussion, each track works as a counterpoint to the disengaged drawl of each vocal.

Transient Curse is Vienna by Ultravox relocated to an industrial estate on the outskirts of town; The Ultras is all dry ice and discombobulation, whilst Psychic Gobshite sounds exactly like a track called Psychic Gobshite should. In other words, there’s little startlingly original to I'm A Bastard, and the production may at times be a little iffy, but oh my – it’s fun. Glorious Bastards, then.