The Computers have their second album coming out next week, so I figured it's about time I wrote something about their first. I was on holiday when this came out so I ended up buying it in a huge haul from Banquet that also included new albums by Fucked Up, Small Brown Bike, Great Cynics and Frank Turner. June 2011 had some big releases.
The first time I saw The Computers live was with The Arteries in Swansea for the release show of their third EP Beers and they were great fun (as were The Arteries), although I vaguely remember the trains to Swansea were a mess and losing people when we had to catch a replacement bus. I'd met The Computers sometime before this (they were staying at Reza's house in Cardiff one night and my old housemate and I were there watching Blade 3) but hadn't got round to checking them out until that night. After that show I picked up their EP You Can't Hide From the Computers from Spillers and was pretty excited for the debut album.
The album is good and has some great tunes; the opener Where Do I Fit In, Blood is Thicker and Music is Dead are all personal favourites. I particularly like the layered vocals on chorus of Blood is Thicker. It does a fairly good job of capturing what makes the band so fun live, but given the increase in the singer's on-stage antics over the last few years, some might disagree. A common theme seems to be that the choruses are just the title of the song repeated a few times, but it works so who am I to complain? It's upbeat but also quite aggressive; you can see why John Reis would want to be involved.
The new record should be good too. I've listened to one of the singles and it was pretty nice. I was also very pleased with their Misfits covers EP, which I'll write about on here soon enough.
Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 11
Cost: £10.50 new
Bought: Banquet Records
When: 21/06/11
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code
