Yes, Inca Babies are back and have a new album out there third since founder member Bill Martens untimely death. Now I know a lot of you will go "They are back? I've never heard of them!" That has continued as this is the third album since 2007. But for some of us Inca Babies were always one of those nearly bands back in the 80's. They nearly made it huge; they nearly broke through to the mainstream but instead did very well in the indie charts and across the cooler bits of Europe and they always had their 12" singles in all the coolest record shops of the time. They recorded four Peel sessions and were on many very cool compilations which is where most of the Inca Babies songs I own are to be found.
So this Manchester band are back with a very dark, almost death rock album to blow the cobwebs away and twist round our brains; coming on like mid to late 80's Nick Cave meets The Brute Chorus. The album opens With The Stereo Plan: a great dark game plan explaining they are taking us back to the place it all began and a man with a Stereo plan. I assume not the type you have to pay off over 36 weeks either. It has some great wild guitars and a good rumbling bass for Harry Stafford to sing over.
Scatter is almost rap; sung like a story song and the vocals deliver among the chaos of the guitars and drums, kicking off like they want to be The Gun Club. This is dark and urgent. But of course sooner or later we will all find Damnation; the next track and a memorable rumination on the state of guilt and retribution.
River To The Centre Of The World slows things down to a funereal crawl as they wonder how to continue after she's walked out on you over twanging Link Wray-like guitars. Stand Down Lucifer is as close to Mercy Seat-era Nick Cave as you could wish for. A great tune with startling guitars set to stun Lucifer into submission.
Panthers is a great tale of the underbelly of society feasting on each other in the rotting corpse of a dying city. Last Flight Out Of Saigon is a rumination taken from the point of view of one of the people rescued from the Embassy roof in the middle of the Vietnam clusterfuck of a war. Wondering what it would be like to live with that as part of your history, it's a good subject for a song.
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Absolute Leader Of the World is a good shot at the sort of idiot who could have the hubris to imagine themselves as the Absolute Leader of the world with a good Bad Seeds meets the Gun Club backing. Devilfish Anarchy sounds like it ought to be a single: a good weird song that wraps itself around my brain quite quickly and is hard to get out of my head. I love the bass part that leads into a wicked guitar solo about halfway through it.
Still Mountain takes things down to an almost acoustic feel and is much slower as Harry tells us about how we need to listen to the quiet before some almost military snare drumming comes in. The song feels like it should be heard at about 2 in the morning. Damn Our Hides is drowning in reverb as it finds its way through the torpor to admit that our hides deserve to be damned and we should of course damn the consequences too.
Ghost Ship adds some trumpet to the mix that makes it sound like a late period Gallon Drunk song and it has the squalling distorted guitars to ram home that feeling nicely. It's a great dark, twisted tune. Blacktop Speedway sounds like it should have been on an Alan Vega solo album in the 80's. It's a fine bit of Gothabilly biker rock.
The album closes with Late Night Frankie Brittle. It's almost like they have re-worked Nick Cave's version of Sleeping Annaleah as a paean to a late night talk jock. It's a great, dark finale to a very cool album that is well worth finding even if you never heard Inca Babies first time around.
Inca Babies online
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