The Common Cold – Shut Up! Yo Liberals!

Amidst the pervasive inoffensiveness of modern indie rock, a few anomalies exist. The Common Cold – a Preston band that thrive on noise and chaos – are one of them. Shut Up! Yo Liberals! might have roots in psych’s woozy repetition, but there are myriad elements to discover here. Informed by The Fall, Neu! and Kaleidoscope, this album is clearly indebted to the more esoteric side of post-punk’s past, yet the band manage to retain a style that’s at odds with the derivative safeness of most contemporary psych and post-punk hybrids.

You’ve also got to appreciate a good album title: on first inspection, you’d expect Shut Up! Yo Liberals! to be a political attack on the liberal elite. And, well – it is, or could be, at least, but there is a method to this discourse: lyrics veer from surreal depictions of everyday life to an assimilation of contemporary culture. They are smart and acerbic – thanks to a predilection for William S. Burroughs and Hubert Selby Jr. – but thematically, the album is a direct and uncompromising document of the band’s deep, personal connections to the North West’s musical heritage.

Despite the general commotion of the album, there are softer moments that elicit something deceivingly gentler: the leisurely stroll of Low Winter Sun is a calmer, more contemplative version of the band with its occasional strings and flute interjections. The head-spinning, whirring synthesis of Stop the Traffic and Half Nelson Headlock is more indicative of the band’s overall style however, with the turbulent, spoken-word tracks proving to be pivotal, direct and ultimately more memorable than the fleeting moments of poppy accessibility.

Shut Up! Yo Liberals! is not an easy listen, but neither are some of The Fall’s best moments. The Common Cold are a much-needed antidote to modern post-punk’s perfectly poised niceness.

Listen to: Low Winter Sun, Napoleon's Index Finger, Body Language