I first came across Coventry four-piece Honeytrap a year or so ago, and at the time I wasn’t overly impressed. Since then, however, either they or I appear to have changed: this EP doesn’t quite have me gaping with amazement, but it’s nonetheless pretty fucking cool.
Especially the final track, 'Mussolini’s Son'. A cross between early Black Heart Procession and a funeral hoedown, it’s weird, haunting and a little bit sarcastic, and contains one of those looping guitar lines backed with swooping violin that simply reeks of sepia-tinted, slightly carnival atmosphere. Add weird percussive sounds, slightly slurred, hypnotic vocal harmonies and a creepy tagged-on outro featuring sneering, half-tuneful vocalisings and you have a an impressively replayable track.
The rest of the EP, while not as instantly haunting, is far from lacking in merit. While it’s all bizarre and chaotic, violin-tinted rock, the songs vary within this template from the high-speed whoops and hollers of the title track to the slow-crescendo lament of ‘I Don’t Know How It Begins’, with dirge-like drums and distant vocals growing layers of psychedelica as the song builds until a full-on climax full of warbling brass. ‘Spotlight’ has an air of Suede or The Smiths to it in the chorus, and sounds more choppy/poppy in the verse, and is the least surprising (and therefore least memorable) track on here.
But its company is illustrious, so never mind that. This is a strong and enjoyable EP with a slight air of art-film soundtrack to it, and has left me keen to hear more from this bunch of sly-humoured, subtly dramatic oddballs.
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7's Score