Glaswegian six-piece
Kaputt banded together from different players in their city's active and closely knit D.I.Y. scene. Soon after their formation, the group released a four-song demo recording of sharp, quickly twisting songs that buzzed with the angular weirdness of no wave punk and held an undercurrent of danceable catchiness. The band's full-length studio debut,
Carnage Hall, presents
Kaputt in a slightly more polished form but sacrifices none of the energy of their skronky punk sound. Album opener "Rats" is an immediate highlight, and the song where the group presents the best examples of their most interesting attributes. Jumpy start-stop rhythms,
Devo-esque vocal affectations, and blurts of saxophone all punctuate the song's caffeinated energy. Much of the album stays in one of two speeds: fast or slightly less fast. In the fast category, bouncing tunes like "Very Satisfied" and the fun punk-funk "Parsonage Square" buzz by in a blur of shouts and odd song structures. The band slows down only a little bit for album highlight "Suspectette." The song rides a relatively mellow groove as surreal lyrics name-check
Mary Weiss, singer of the legendry girl group
the Shangri-Las. As the tune wanders by, it's unclear if the song is a conspiracy theory about
Weiss being investigated for a crime or just fan fiction of some sort, but it's still one of the best moments on the album. Somewhere between the edgy push of the
Delta 5, the art-school punk of early
Talking Heads, and the impish juvenilia of
X-Ray Spex,
Kaputt find the framework that these 13 songs are built on. It's a strong debut from an excitable band barely able to contain themselves as they blow through their songs like a friendly tropical storm.