Burning Condors
Last Train Home
October 28 2013 (Snakehead Records)
7/10
Words: Dave Beech
London quartet Burning Condors are a band who are about as close to punk as one can get without jabbing a safety pin through their nose and spitting on people. Hailed as “The four-headed lovechild of the Sex Pistols and the Strokes”, the band are bridging a transatlantic gap, fusing together nostalgic rockabilly with a garage rock aesthetic all the while maintaining a high degree of 'don't give a fuck' swagger that permeates each and every one of their tracks.
The band's forthcoming single 'Last Train Home' is a perfect introduction to their unique aesthetics. Embracing the Nashville setting in which it was recorded; banjo licks played on an electric guitar makes up a short introduction whilst a double bass and a nostalgically simplistic drum beat that brings to mind 50s rock 'n' roll form the backbone what is a quintessentially American composition. Lyrically, however, the band paint a romantic picture of falling in love set against a backdrop of London life. It's a bizarre combination of cultures and aesthetics but one which works entirely in their favour. The inclusion of legendary session musician Dave Roe (Johnny Cash's Tennessee Three) also does nothing to hamper the song's overall feel, and, in fact, seems to make the rockabilly elements all the more authentic whilst the backing vocal harmonies cross the Atlantic once more, bringing to mind 90s Britpop.
Overall 'Last Train Home' exerts a somewhat anarchic quality, with the song rattling towards its conclusion at a breakneck pace. This is where the band's more punkier aspects come to the fore, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the song was recorded live and in only one or two takes. It's a fresh angle on nostalgic genres, catapulting each in to the contemporary whilst never straying too far from their roots. Bold, brash and bouncy, Burning Condors have certainly carved themselves a niche in the periphery of the art punk movement and while their music is certainly an acquired flavour, it seems that more and more people are getting the taste for it.
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