Debt Sounds is more than a credit crunch pun. Whoever invented the asinine term credit crunch should be crushed from a great height with sacks of pennies, but I digress. Debt Sounds, the most recent release by The Bordellos, is one of the bravest things I’ve heard in ages. It was recorded over the course of ten weeks, adhering to a set of rules laid down by singer/songwriter/guitarist Brian Shea. 

1) Recorded to 4 track cassette with no overdubs after the fact.
2) All vocal takes first takes.
3) All songs written within the week of recording.
4) No going back to add to songs the next week.

This explains the shambling, early Bad Seeds quality to the results, more psychiatric then psychedelic. The album starts with the ominous Fading Honey which very obliquely hints at a loss of some kind but never specifies what before ending with a snippet of speech. This transitions into Spirograph, a Sticky Fingers Stones era ballad, albeit one recorded during a coke binge instead of after. This fades into You Better Run, where the three related members of the band each take a vocal. This track is a standout for the thumb piano — garage organ interplay and Antony’s Bryan Ferry via Bela Lugosi take on his verse.

Track four, Rolf Harris contains guest guitar work from cousin Brendan Bannon from Ireland, and contains possibly the only appearance of fretboard tapping or hammer ons on a Bordellos track to date. It also contains violin played by Brian’s son Dan, and the line “Rolf Harris will be your sexual hero”. Sealhead concerns a woman who can only reach climax wearing a seal mask, and contains an eerie chorus of “Put on your sealhead” along with some nice Marrish arpeggiated guitar.

Then the lo fi aesthetic really hits you square in the solar plexus, as She’s An Artform, all 50 something seconds of it, rage from the speakers, resembling nothing so much as The Fall and the curious sound of The Bordellos rocking out! Wait! There’s more! Homeless Bound pivots on a riff resembling the bastard lovechild of Ron Asheton and Billy Gibbons, however disturbing the conception may have been, and Gary’s basswork once more shines.

I May Be Reborn features what sounds like a Mellotron flute sound to these ears, and some lovely guitar work in addition to the best Shea vocal performance (by any of them, not that there’s much contest) to date. In a just world, this study of joyful isolation would replace the fashion miserablism of.……just name one of the bands I yearn to gun down. Please. 

Dead Friend Don’t Leave Me Hanging In The Kitchen is another almost heavy Bordellos track, with a grinding bass riff and truly venomous vocals from Dan, crooning and yelping like Nick Cave fuelled by teenage angst instead of mid life crisis. One of the albums darkest tracks segues into ???, one of the lightest, a harmony soaked pop song with one of the strangest train impersonations ever. Seriously. It’s worth the wait to find out.

Merseybeat Memories featured Brian on bass, and is a funky Bordellos track (another rarity) about the fleeting nature of fame. This is poignantly followed by a song of tribute to forgotten Merseyside hero Jimmy Campbell, a great songwriter I’ll have to get around to reviewing for this here site, probably best known for Dreams Of Michaelangelo and creator of some genius psych pop over the course of a few underheard albums.

Why devote space to explaining who he is? Well this song, to me, is the heart of the album. “He could’ve been a star, just like me”, the chorus runs. Like the work of Jimmy Campbell, the Bordellos are underheard. This album will not be played on the radio, it’s got tape noise on. Don’t blame yourselves. For some people, hearing a bit of static and background interference would ruin the music. Probably as it’d mean they’d actually have to LISTEN to it. Even supposedly progressive, alternative, edgy insert buzzword here internet stations won’t play it because it’s got a bit of tape hiss on. The Bordellos are making some of the best pop music I’ve heard, it’s just they’re doing it in such a wilfully obscure way you’ll never hear it. 

Captain Coma is another one of the short burst of noise tracks, and sounds like Primal Scream. In a good way. Not the hand clappy, “WOO MAMA!” Riot City Blues way or the Screamadelica grad student’s first E way. When they actually rock openly. New York Girl is the perfect illustration of my rant before, and actually I’m almost at a loss as to why it was included.

Or I was on first listen. On first listen it’s Dan’s mumbly Nick Cave vocals over spidery bass and guitars and eerie violin. Sounds like Bauhaus but less ear gougingly irritating due to Peter Murphy’s stage school vampirism, aiming for Lugosi and coming out Leslie Nielson. This would be fine, but it’s really quiet. Really undermixed. Then suddenly he screams the title three times in an increasingly feral manner. It’s bloody creepy. I’m not sure if I like it or not but I never skip it.

She In The Sun features bizarre pots and pans percussion and psych guitar from Brendan once more. There’s a section that sounds like The End but clearly isn’t, the guitar’s playing something completely different, that going down a river to hell feel still remains. This segues into Fine, a song for trebly guitar, Lydonesque vocals and wibbly electronics, which is somehow one of the bleakest things I’ve heard in ages although it just repeats “Everything is fine” in a way that implies that it’s really not.

However, none of the oddness that has preceded it can compare you for Honey Pie, featuring dispassionate female vocals repeating the title like a mantra and a steady bassline from Gary which just makes the auditory madness even more bizarre. A percussion track briefly appears then the mic clicks and stops working mid take. A violin occasionally scythes through the mix. Brian yowls on and on about apologising for his lies, and other things that rhyme with pie. Dan provides truly eerie screams and howls in the background as well as noise guitar which really does your brain in. It’s more unhinged and amelodic than Sister Ray or Sonic Youth, it’s closer to The Smiths covering Merzbow.

17 tracks. Recorded in that manner. Going over to www​.myspace​.com/​t​h​e​b​o​r​d​ellos, there’s a blog updated by Brian or Dan fairly often, and the stories from the making of the album range from the tragic to the truly surreal. My personal favourite is Ant placing buckets in various places in the living room studio to catch water seeping through the walls, saying “Life’s too short for guttering”. This album is indeed proof that there is more to life than guttering.