SINGLE REVIEW: Ice, Sea, Dead People – Hence:Elvis

As the postal strike was in full swing I told Ice, Sea, Dead People to just send me an MP3, so this time there's no press release for us to read from, just the text on their MySpace and the music. The logical place to start, therefore, is with their name. Is it a clever joke on a phrase made famous by a ridiculously popular movie, which also manages to parody the most stupidly popular movie of all time, or is it a really bad idea? Probably the latter, but then I'm not really in a position to throw stones and frankly I really like the name 'Future of the Left' now, despite having massive reservations when I was first told about it.

So let's move on from their worst aspect (yeah really, the name's as bad as it gets) to Ice, Sea, Dead People's greatest: their songs. Or 'song' in this case because all I have is the a-side of their forthcoming heavyweight coloured limited edition 7" vinyl (also available as a digital download); the only way you or I will hear the b-side is by buying the ruddy thing as it's not even available to stream from anywhere I can see. A nice touch.

"Hence:Elvis" is one of those perfect little bridges between noise-heavy shouty rhythmic punk, and catchy tune that has you clicking the repeat button ten seconds in. In a little over two minutes we go through start-stop guitar and drum stabs, driving shout-a-long choruses, and post-punk synthy melodic ripples (okay so it's a guitar with a cool effect but you'd never realise). I think I've come to end of my reviewer's thesaurus here so I'll just say that it's a great song, really great, and I'll be wanting one of those coloured vinyl thingies when they arrive.

Web links:
http://myspace.com/iceseadeadpeople