The self-titled EP from Galways The Clockworks will be released on 1st April (no seriously) via Alan McGee’s label It’s Creation Baby.
Here’s our track by track review:
Endgame
Being directionless in a world gone fuck up has never sounded so great. Frontman McGregor’s vocal cadence radiates “4 Real” carvings in the arm it’s so vital; every breath, note, silence sounds like the key moment in the best film you’ve ever seen.
Previously, their guitars have been in two camps. ‘Can I Speak to a Manager’ and ‘Bills and Pills’ were a great homage to 00s icons The Rakes, The Cribs, and beefed up Good Shoes. Then, in ‘Enough is Never Enough’ something changed. Brutishness pervaded their punk as they traversed far more desolate landscapes.
Image and artwork courtesy of Sonic Pr
Here, they have married up the two to create the next wave of UK punk. It’s fired them into the brace of Shame and Fontaines DC, arguably surpassing them. Especially when you consider McGregor has found a way to sit between Henry Dartnail’s (Young Knives) slightly high-pitched growl and the warming punk of Grian Chatten (Fontaines DC).
Money (I Don’t Wanna Hear It)
It’s felt an age since social commentary and great characterisation were a part of our lives. There has been great polemic of recent times but, ‘Money’ goes further. It unites the town crier with the poet and is destined to reel in fans from all strands of the alternative world!
Feel So Real
Almost a year to the day since this was first released and its prose feels more needed now than then. The disgusting Spring Statement that neglected millions (becoming a habit Sunak!!!) are lit up perfectly. McGregor’s lyrics scour London life, consuming the good, the greed, and the destitute. It feels like Welsh, King, and Niven have formed a three-piece punk band with one objective, righteous angst!
The Temper
Not many punks can strip down to acoustic guitars and maintain the quality levels. The Clockworks do not struggle here. The passion of ‘England’s In The Wars’ and the playfulness of ‘D’Ya Wanna Be Spacemen’ offer up a moment of calm but incisive lyrical joy.
Images of Pete and Carl filling time between stage collapses or Brett Anderson sitting on the edge of the stage without a mic come racing to the fore as, this acoustic affair sways with Blake-esque poetry.