According to the press release, Neimo’s album ‘From Scratch’ is the sound of ‘a Parisian underground dosed up on raging hormones, feverish enthusiasm and amphetamine-quaffing synth-punk beats’ and it’s a pretty fair description, although added to the mix is just a hint of a band trying too hard to not care all, a kind of Pete Doherty-esque ‘Everyone look at me not giving a fuck’ approach that is going to grate with some people.
‘From Scratch’ is a collection of eleven dirty pretty tracks, the kind of beauty-in-squalor vibe that makes them spiritual cousins to both the Sex Pistols and Depeche Mode, and the album is admittedly a pretty effective collision of electro pulses and punkish guitars.
With songs as three minute sneers, bass lines like fingers prodding you in the chest to make their point, and guitar stabs that border on percussion, the album – superficially – sits alongside homegrown acts like The Libertines and Little Man Tate in terms of sound, although in terms of rock’n’roll posturing they seem closer to US acts such as the Strokes and The Ramones.
Actually, what hits me is that they have the self-concious rock pirate swagger of the Pyschedelic Furs, 20% punk and 80% pop-tart and bizarrely, all the more attractive for it.
On tracks like ‘Strip for Me’ and ‘All the Same’ there are echoes of The Bravery, although Neimo are spikier and with looser vocals, more Iggy than Morrisey. There are elements of the Strokes on ‘Hot Girl’ and ‘Work it Out’, and ‘Now That You Got Me’ sounds like 80’s Rolling Stones!
Shout-a-long choruses are in plentiful supply, such as in ‘All The Same’, although there are relatively quieter moments – ‘Blow My Mind’ is a love song through whiskey tears that comes within gobbing distance of sounding tender with chugging guitars and a soaring, searing chorus, barbed yet beautiful.
The final track is a cover of Lenny Kravitz’s ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’, and sounds a cross between a New Wave band and a Space Invaders machine.
All in all, there’s a fair mix of lipstick and grit on From Scratch. It’s not menacing but enjoys striking menacing poses – so if you like the dream of danger, the sweat of Parisian rock clubs and the buccaneering sound of leather jacketed indie-punk, check out Neimo. They’ll be some voguing in the mosh pits of Paris tonight.