Damn Arms The Live Artex by: Liam Tracey Mon:10-Dec-07 Label: Timberyard Year: 2007 WB rating 60 out of 100

Despite what the naysayers may have led you to believe, Damn Arms are not a copy-cat band, and such statements grossly underestimate their ability. The simple fact is the band’s debut, The Live Artex, has hit the scene during a time where electro/synth fuelled music is flooding the market, so it’s easy to see why Damn Arms might be dismissed as “just another one of those”. The similarities to the Presets’ Beams and Midnight Juggernauts’ Dystopia can be easily seen at times through synth looping and heart pumping bass lines, but Damn Arms have used a lot more conventional rock elements than these acts to create a blend of dance, punk and experimentation that is, at most times, highly enjoyable.

Having toured behind both highly regarded international acts such as the Klaxons and We Are Scientists, as well as local luminaries like Midnight Juggernauts and Cut Copy, Damn Arms have certainly picked up a thing or two about how to produce a fantastic live sound. That live sound is to a large extent captured on The Live Artex, mostly due to the band recording in the studio straight to tape. There is a presence to the songs here that ensures they don’t sound overproduced and as a result the fist-pumping moments of ‘Home Wrecker’ and rawness of ‘Chrome Kids’ are as real as the sweat and skin of the band’s live set.

What is noticeable after even one listen of The Live Artex is that the shared duties of singing, between Yama Indra on synths and Tim Sullivan on bass, allow the band a versatility that is not so easily achieved by their contemporaries. Sullivan delivers boyish vocals on the ode to Springsteen, ‘The Boss’, whilst Indra introduces vocoder in the completely removed electronic vocals on ‘Thirty Six’, a song not too distant from the Midnight Juggernaut’s ‘Tombstone’. These moves between naturalistic and electronica succeed in variation, but the randomness of their implementation can make the The Live Artex feel disjointed

Just as the vocals seem confusingly all over the place, the music behind the vocals is equally perplexing. Album opener ‘Edie’ introduces ELO inspired synth before rapidly converging into Queen-like guitar breaks to produce a 70s flashback. Whilst ‘Edie’ is easily one of the best moments on this album, erratic punk directly takes over for ‘The Not So Progressive Punks’ and from here this mashing of genres spirals out of control.

While the strange progression throughout The Live Artex might perplex some listeners – ‘is this the one band or a mix tape?’– Damn Arms have still created a more than decent recording that demonstrates their abilities to draw ideas from their peers, while developing their own style. Damn Arms beat the desire to dance into listeners here just as much as they do in their live show; however the downhill slide taken at the end of the album unfortunately may limit the time that The Live Artex hangs around the dancefloor.