The Fnords – Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Fnords

This Edinburgh three-piece sound, at times, almost uncannily like Thee Headcoatees: snarling dual-female vocals are laid over super-trebly guitar, skulking basslines and thumping drums. The Fnords differentiate themselves through a penchant for reverb-heavy solos, which give tracks like She’s So Sinister a comic-book ghoulishness; and on Alternative 3, with additional percussion floating weirdly high in the mix, lending a disorienting quality to things.

The vocals are delivered with aplomb, particularly on a cover of The Hells’ He’s The Devil, and the overall dynamic of the band is just the right side of giddy messiness. The Fnords know how to maintain that wheels-about-to-come-off feel that characterises the best garage-punk – a point made most forcefully on surf guitar-led songs like Scumbaby. The influences here may be obvious, but Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Fnords’ procession of addictive vocal hooks and boisterously simple riffs renders such criticisms irrelevant.