Kent six-piece The Mavs has taken grime onto the UK indie circuit and, as you might expect from the EP’s title, the resulting songs are more Benny Hill than Benny Ill.
Links between grime and late “70s British punk are well established: working class, spontaneous, lo-fi with vocals spat out fast enough to show the singers/MCs are so urgent they cannot afford to take a breath. Grime’ not quite as reactionary as punk claimed to be, but the pirate radio mixes and badly pressed singles have all punk’s fire.
Indie bands have been recycling punk and post-punk for the past few years, but in a conservative way that draws from canonised (and safe) elements of the sound, taut no-wave rhythms, early electronics, snarled or monotone vocals. It’s a long way from the Au Pairs or Public Image Limited appropriating the dub they were listening to and in the process sparking thrilling new music.
“Hater,’ by Various Productions, was the first song from outside the grime community to take the sound in a different direction (disappointingly, followed by a lacklustre album). Now Sydney/New York label 12 Apostles has another, the aforementioned Mavs. Made up of a DJ/producer duo, three MCs and a singer, they’re exactly the kind of band you would expect from the shock-peddling label: schizophrenic influences, raucous sounds and bawdy songs.
Lyrical references to their town of Medway, the Taliban, threats and, of course, smut abound. Each of the four tracks could be from a different band: typical MC-driven grime (“No Balls’), a theatrically gruff hybrid (“Dumpweed’) and farcically knees-up novelty (“Great Green Drought’). It is good to hear a band take a chance, but the Mavs’ thin angst falls well short of the visceral power of grime in full flight.
The early “90s acid house explosion threw bands in a spin with its funky drummer loops, rapped interludes and record scratch patches. Indie groups like the Happy Mondays drew on the zeitgeist to create intoxicatingly original songs. But at the other end of the spectrum Pop Will Eat Itself added little to either camp. Slightly Smutty leans in the latter direction.
