Drink Me

It's really Garside who raises the stakes. Like a latter-day Nina Hagen, her voice slips between the lucid and the lost. "Kitty Collar Tight" sees her echo the rhythmic ranting of Mark E Smith. The closing "For I Am the Way" has her as clear and tiny as Stina Nordenstam, while during "Razorblade Sky" she's sexy-cute then suddenly mighty, like Catatonia's Cerys Matthews. And she freaks out--Man, does she freak out. Yet, whether or not Garside is wildly spiralling up or down, the band still back her with vigour and imagination. Sometimes content to simply provide pulsing rhythms or quietly bleak atmospherics, more often they kick up a filthy grunge-metal racket. High-minded and visceral, Drink Me is a disturbing joy. --Dominic Wills