Altsounds - The Rigg - Golden Handshake [Album]

Newcastle post punkers avoid the cliches. Just.

Lazy Music Journalist Device #138: "The Editors and Interpol sound like Joy Division." No, they fucking don't. A reliable test to help clear up any confusion would be to simply dive in to the exquisite torture of "Unknown Pleasures," suffer the tidal waves of despair and ecstacy, marvel at Ian Curtis anti-virtuoso poetry and the other-wordly experience of Martin Hannett's drug-nerd twenty third century engineering.

And The Rigg have been listening to Joy Division records. A lot. Frontman James Redhead has his Curtis-howl off to a better tee than say Tom Smith, but "Golden Handshake" still amounts to yet another clone of the erudite Interpol / Editors noughties baroque that lazy music journalists think sounds like Joy Division. If you get me?

It's a good job for the Geordies then that I am a) only a part time music journalist, b) not particularly lazy and c) have listened to music which pre-dates Nirvana. This is because additional track 'Something To Believe' is a resolute slice of Fall meets Gang of Four new wave with a skyscraping riff which screams tower block paranoia and skinny-tied dystopia. You can almost hear a third world dictator barking the orders to it, bending his cane and contemplating your waif-like face in his spit-shined boots.