Following shows with The Murder Capital, Mush and Flamingods, Sunderland punks Roxy Girls follow up debut mini-album ‘A Poverty of Attention’ with new EP ‘A Wealth of Information’.
The EP opens with the angular post punk and relentless drums of ‘Dirtier’. These progress into a spiky attitude that recalls Maximo Park or XTC: ‘When the finger is pointing, you act like you are see-through’; ‘The day you choose to listen, you finally understand’. ‘Commands’ has a more assertive tone as the band declare ‘I’m tired of your shit’ amidst stop-start riffs and a swirling rhythm section while ‘You Have to Waste Your Time’ is packed with short, sharb and subtle observations and more jangly guitar hooks.
‘Poor Cow’ has more of a DIY feel in its introduction but the observations on destroyed livelihoods and working hard couldn’t be more important. It also finishes with a call-and-response before the EP heads into a power pop-tinged direction on ‘The Droid’ – a song that attempts to make sense of what it is to be human in today’s technologically focused world: ‘I’ve read all the books, browsed all the pages’. ‘All Talk’ is filled with fuzzy guitars and the tale of a person who inspires ‘tragic devotion’ (‘What will you do when he comes for you? What will you say? Please take me away?’) but doesn’t live up to their own self-importance.
The closing ‘Get Up (Seize the Day)’ opens with anthemic drums and a feedback-led build-up before heading into something more upbeat with a demand of ‘Go to work, get up and seize the day’.
Short, spiky and with so much to say, you’ll want to dig in more to this ‘wealth of information’…
