Blistering Brighton six-piece deliver their own version of modern life is rubbish with their debut Big Mess – A real blur of frenetic energy.

---

Calloused fingertips; waning eyesight from the blaring fluorescent lights, “these LCD screens are burning me completely clean;” we know the big mess modern life poses to us. A sapless void of depravation, office spaces are the off-white bowels where dreams – and apparent sanity – inherently go to die. We’ve had enough. Brighton art-rock band Public Body have drafted their final complaint and wish to speak to the manager.

And it’s a heroic yawp of heretic anthems to the modern age of life. Delivered with off-kilter chord yanks and synth-y vibrations at killer speeds, Public Body‘s Big Mess is painting an angry monologue all with the same brush. The first statement in Break From Life pretty much sums up the remaining 10-track debut as singer Gilmore declares he has begun to watch the clock run down its hours: “I’m not capitalising on my day-to-day / my life goals are somewhat in disarray..” The album pretty much follows the same thematic layer of pent-up frustration. and a cathartic sigh of relief as we take our foot of the gas of life’s busy highway – even if it’s just for an hour or two.

Dusting off the bygone technologies of an 80’s drum machine and a 60’s transistor amplifier, Driven By Data is a repetitive strain on our reliance to the horror-show of technological warfare. Slaves to the machine, glitchy guitar weavings and blaring drums bring in Gilmore once again into the buoyant working man of post-punk vocals. Dysfunction offers more of the same with the use of Terminator lasers signifying perhaps a neo apocalypse. No Constraint is a favourite amongst the many, as it brings into the foray a full jaunty synth seduction and wibbly-wobbly electronics into a four-to-the-floor rock piece with pace.

Cathode Ray Tubes is certainly a direct reference to those hideous office lights; a blaring tube of abhorrent colours adding to an already uncouth office environment. Mr Cats is… I’m not too sure what Mr Cats is, to be honest. The low wah-wahs and synth stabs playing into the whole “cat” thing, no doubt. It’s certainly a fun add-on but definitely but added in on a whim, almost with a “fuck it” mentality. Before we’ve even had time to breathe in the music that’s been thrown at us, we’re at the end with Age of Junk – is this the age of information, or is this just the age of junk / I’m wasting my breath, I’m wasting my breath” – an overload of static information; a take on the effects consumerism has on us as humans. There’s no original thought here anymore: we’re pawns of practice, pawns of purchase.

---

While Big Mess offers a protest march to modern life through its feeding frenzy of fast, fast, fast – it doesn’t offer much else to the regurgitated punk anthems of ‘sticking it to the man’.

While they are self-aware of this through their art form, there’s certainly more folks in the business of alternative post-punk that are doing a better job via a far more creative angle.

Fancy something extra?