Talk About The Weather＜Smoke Vinyl＞

The Lorries' first full album kicks off with the grinding title track -- steady, not punishing, but still aggressive beats, slashing guitar, Chris Reed's abrupt but not shouted vocals. In retrospect the band actually make a great case for being the slightly more romantic Big Black instead of just being the Sisters/Joy Division, Pt. 2 with this song, and keeping that in mind, Talk About the Weather has more going on for it than meets the eye. There's certainly more than a little ghost-of-Andrew Eldritch in the arrangements, not to mention Ennio Morricone (thus trumping the Fields of the Nephilim's own twist on that influence by a couple of years), but Reed's lyrics and singing definitely show the Ian Curtis touch more in their emotional roil as opposed to Hammer horror. As a result, compared to the Sex Gang Children or the like, the Lorries come across more straightforwardly, their music here sounding often brusque. The album's downside is that the basic sound doesn't really change much, but when it's on, as with the title track, it's very much on. "Hollow Eyes" is another one of the winners, taking the high-speed, nervous post-punk approach and adding on a great, simple, but effective chorus to the spiralling riffs and the hollow bass lope, while the sudden shift in velocity on "Strange Dreams" shows a great sense of drama. "Sometimes" ranks up there as well for being the secret winner -- it's the closest the album gets to a quiet and tender love song, which it really isn't per se. But Reed's singing aims at a warmer approach here on the chorus, as does the music, and there's definitely a tangled emotional interplay that comes through, love and hate in a few words. ~ Ned Raggett