American band Mynx have two songs on this Filthy Little Angels split single, and the second one is disappointingly underwhelming. It's called Ass'n Flash'n, it's about flashing your arse and it utterly failed to reduce me to fits of giggles. Not that toilet humour is a bad thing, but I do ask that it be funny toilet humour. If they have an inappropriate video to go with the song live I might forgive them for it, and failing that their other song on here, I'm So LA, is redemption enough. It's a hilarious slice of minimalist electrofuzz poking exuberant fun at all things fashionista ("My sunglasses match the cooking tray... I'm so LA!"), and it takes the piss in a quite glorious manner, even allowing for the fact that one can't help suspecting that the band have fallen in quite a major (if oh-so-ironic) way for that Hollywood glamour themselves. It's performed in suitably super-cool, hints-of-vacancy drawl, it rhymes passé with déclassé and the joke has yet to wear off despite repeated listenings. And you can keep the catty comments about the sophistication of my sense of humour to yourselves, thankyou very much.
Alice and the Enemies are a very different beast, very far indeed from being cool and detached and all the more brilliant for it. Their clattering distortion-fuzz-swing may be a little strange and a little disconcerting but DAMN! it sure is likeable. In fact, they may well be an addictive substance - the more I play their single, the more I want to play it again. Alice and the Enemies are a foot-stomping day-dreaming fantasising car chase of a band; a thwarted romantic using the saving grace of quirky, worldly humour to lift them above the heel-dragging ranks of the woe-is-me brigade. Whether providing a bittersweet soundtrack to the dizzy daydreams of the closet romantic or storming through a warped anti-romance distortion-fest, they are at all times a highly enjoyable and exhilarating listen - and a strangely sexy one, in an oddball sort of way. Drowned in Sound will be watching this mighty and intriguing band with no small amount of interest - and maybe some trepidation, too.