Oh thank god: teenagers are in bands again. Let’s face it, rock n roll, and particularly punk, is teenage music and should be played only by teenager. Any adult in a band should be ashamed of themselves. It’s disgusting.
Los Angeles four-piece untitled have a bad name but everything else about them is amazing. They’re all 18 or 19, but look about 13 (at least to middle aged rock critic eyes), complete with bumfluff ‘taches and a puppydog bounciness. But they sound ferocious: hardcore filtered through the quiet-loud dynamics of grunge, which basically means they have good songs underneath the racket. Choruses, that kind of thing.
The band became something of a viral sensation with a couple of early singles last year, with them identified as nu-grunge poster boys, and for this short UK tour they’ve been showing that the social media attention is justified.
They look great, like nice-looking kids you’d chat to for directions in Venice Beach, but who then rob you. Singer/guitarist Danny (they don’t have surnames, like The Ramones) howls and plays like Kurt Cobain but is even more dangerously cuter, like a jellycat with a blade. Bassist Juan has dyed hair and rolls around on the floor at lot. Other guitarist James looks like a juvenile delinquent version of Tom Morello. Drummer Lorenzo is shirtless and smiley and could have stepped straight out of Dazed and Confused. All of them are enjoying being able to drink over here.
The songs are amazing: latest single Tinted View sounds like Mudhoney recording a workout song for methheads, and it speeds up two-thirds in, and ends with Danny and Juan jumping around as if killing on-stage roaches. Their most popular song Restless is very on-the-money grunge but is made fresh and exciting live, the band acting as if the quiet bits need to be gotten out of the way as soon as possible for the loud bits. Lorenzo bashes the hell of out his kit and you could almost hear the punk ghosts of the 100 Club stirred by the chaos.
Say It Again is a killer ode to rejecting the shitty world and your shitty self, and suddenly it makes sense why grunge is back… things are that bad.
They finish with Nothing Good, and set about trying to destroy their instruments and the sight of all this makes you want to thank god for untitled, teenagers getting together to make something exciting and fun happen again. Get them back over here asap, please…
