Music Week's Ben Homewood on Permit’s - Vol.1 EP
December in the music business: Christmas parties, out of office auto-replies and endless list-making.
They’re hardly new, but the tips lists always seem to create the same babbled mixture of excitement and moaning.
This year’s have been sloshing around since November, I remember the initial onslaught because the emails started landing during the week Leonard Cohen died.
It was an uncomfortable coincidence, but it still felt a little too much like the industry machine pushing relentlessly on.
Five weeks later, many already seem sick of lists (and perhaps this year/the world in general). If that sounds like you, check out Permit – two kids from Bloomington, Indiana – and their Vol.1 EP.
Just released on Fat Possum, it’s a six-song sneer of crackly vocals, drums and punkish guitar licks that drill deep into your brain.
It’s rough, fast and fun, and when I first heard it I got that urgent, pit of the stomach feeling, when you just need more of a band.
Because they’ve no scheduled UK plans and precious little online coverage, that feeling hasn’t diminished. But the EP will do for now, and it’s short enough to play four times in a row.
Buy it for everyone you know for Christmas and celebrate the fact that, sometimes, nothing can make you feel like brilliant new music can.
NB Music Week’s tips list is coming soon...
