Parva
Hessles

I saw a few minutes of ‘em live and I was impressed. Vivacious, energetic, interesting… It all seemed promising. You shoulda seen the grin on my face when Parva’s new single, 'Hessles', was flung my way at the last DiS Staff Meeting. “Oh baby! It’s gonna rock!”

I was wrong.

Putting it on the headphones on my three-hour train journey back from London, single track 'Hessles' failed to do much. I mean, it didn’t particularly offend me. There are a few nice guitary bits in there but it struck me as, well… a bit boring. Boring?! YOU FUCKING WHAT?! After listening to track 2, I take that back, I really do. With the crazy, unpredictable, totally out on a whim title ‘Put Me On The Cover Of Your Magazine’, the track is essentially an excessively long two minutes and fourteen seconds of monotonous, uninteresting vocals repeating the title of the track over… and over… and oooooover.

In the final track, 'A.K.A' the CD almost hints at redeeming itself with a mildly amusing slowed down ska beat teamed with “Russian influenced instrumentals” and the now unsurprisingly repetitive use of quirky, like, WAY FUNNY lyrics “yuh-du-dum-dum… dum-dum”…And then you get, err, bored.

Frankly, this CD is embarrassing. It’s the kind of thing that if played whilst in the company of other people would make you cringe and want to run away and hide. If they’re trying to be all tongue-in-cheek and ironic, it’s clearly not working. This is fuel for our rants about exciting music, about passion and exhilaration, integrity and energy. It’s why punk rock has never been more poignant; why the majority of our writers are still gutted about the loss of Miss Black America and it's why every Wednesday those of you in/around London should get yourself down to the Windmill and discover some bands who’ll remind you how exciting music really can be.