Black Paint

Wet Paint
From: United Kingdom

After suffering the loss of their royalties after a robbery it’s hardly surprising that Wet Paint are not in the mood for a party. It’s also understandable that their second album, the bleakly titled, ‘Woe’ is about as far from a party record as you’re likely to get. With lyrics that talk of money loss and being written off and titles like Aim Low and Little Disappointments it’s unlikely to feature on the recommended listening list of the Depression Alliance anytime soon.

The album actually gets off to a lively start with the storming ‘Gone So Long’, a marvellous melange of their trademark Pavement inspired slacker rock and The Dears’ Lost In The Plot. It’s a great start but it’s not long before the dark clouds start to descend and the black dog starts to bark. After the relatively upbeat (all things are relative) ‘Uptight Casuals’ the gloomier ‘Distant Memory’ crawls in like the Wedding Present after a particularly bad depressive episode. It is a despondent five minute mood dampener, the musical equivalent of a thunderstorm at a carnival.

Thankfully the mood is lightened a little by 'Aim Low', the closest Wet Paint come on the album to bright and breezy. It’s a track that would feel at home on the Juno soundtrack, but only if they remade the film as a tragedy. ‘Dead Night’ also tries it’s best to raise the spirits with it’s chiming, Idlewildesque guitars but it’s not long before the gloom descends again with Shadows Secret Life, a song infused with regret and sorrow, the melancholic Little Disappointments and A Bird’s Yawn which ends with the refrain ‘I’ll be damned’.

The album is brought to a close by Lynchstrumental, an atmospheric, bleak, funereal track that marks a fitting end to an often oppressive album that hangs heavy with the weight of the world on its shoulders.

Wet Paint are not a depressing, or a depressed, band. They have a nice line in self deprecating humour. Check out their Facebook site where they rate themselves as the 12th best band called Wet Paint in England, But ‘Woe’ is a perfect title for their second album. It’s the sound of a band chronicling their despair, the sound of a band who have forgotten how to smile, how to have fun, how to let their hair down. It’s not by any stretch of the imagination a bad album, in fact there are a couple of tracks that could scrape into my list of favourite tracks of the year, it’s just really heavy going and certainly not an album to leave lying around in a psychiatrist’s waiting room.

Go Try

Wet Paint - Gone So Long by rcdsrcdsrcds

Wet Paint - Dead Night by rcdsrcdsrcds

Go Visit

Wet Paint - Facebook : Last.FM