kaputt: carnage hall

Kaputt are a recently hatched post punk act from Glasgow, Scotland. Numbering six, Kaputt feature Simone Wilson and Cal Donnelly on guitars and vocals, Chrissy Barnacle also sings and plays saxophone. Tobias Carmichael is responsible for bass, whilst Rikki Will and Emma Smith cover drums and percussion respectively. Racing away from the playful torn edge of no-wave song, Kaputt blurt out tracks with twitchy charisma, their catchy riffs circle with relish, allowing timely sax stonks and stop-start rhythms to drive things on. Vocals leap, guitars bluster and always the saxophone snakes, hypnotically drawn through the erratic beat. The songs on Carnage Hall, Kaputt's debut album released by Upset The Rhythm, were all written in Glasgow between 2016-2018. Following on from the independence referendum and the subsequent Brexit vote these songs couldn't help but be influenced by the maelstrom of political hypocrisy and confusion in the air. Other themes prevalent on this energetic corkscrew of an album include the offbeat happenchance of life in 2019, notions of surveillance, identity (personal as well as the biscuit-tin styled persona of the Scottish Highlands), industrialization, and family. Title track "Carnage Hall" is about an alternative dimension in which Judy Garland's famous Carnegie Hall show, (one of the group's favorite albums), was a total bust rather than the roaring success it proved to be. "Rats" is a crumpled twist of song -- explosive, ruminative, and content to bemuse with a loose political allegory drawn out from a dank pet shop. "Accordion" lilts with more breezy tendency. Kaputt excel at fidgety, speedy outpourings of ideas, their songs zap by, multifaceted and bejeweled with detail and color. "Parsonage Square" is a great example of this, it's a song about public access, panopticons, and paranoia hurtled into a motley rip of melody. Meanwhile, "Suspectette" concerns itself with Mary Weiss of The Shangri-Las' FBI file. "Think About Your Face" investigates those certain grimaces made in passionate embrace. "Highlight" is an grade-A anthem doubling up as an eulogy for shipbuilding, "Drinking Problems Continue" parts 1 and 2 are about Ullapool and generational holidays spent watching "sun set on the ferry". Carnage Hall is an empathic album dealing with memory and place, but most importantly with people. Recorded and mixed by Luigi Pasquini in Anchor Lane Studios in Glasgow in spring 2019, before being mastered this summer by John Hannon at No Studios. 180 gram vinyl; edition of 400.