Pinact – The Part That No One Knows

Glasgow three-piece Pinact are back with The Part That No One Knows and it's a solid treat. This is rock music formed from a kiln in which records by Nirvana, Sonic Youth and Weezer have previously been forged. 

The album opens with the title track and a gentle piano refrain. Have we accidentally turned on the new Agnes Obel record by accident? No. No we haven't. For here is the kind of bassline you might once have attributed to Krist Novoselic, here is the crunch of wirey guitars, here is a sneer of frontman Corrie Gillies. This is rock music, and it's up there with the best rock albums we've heard this year; three young men dedicated to the idea of creating music you might want to play more than once, loud, while pretending that the hoover is a guitar.

Just as Kurt Cobain married his fuzzed-up punk to a love of the Beatles, so Pinact ensure their noise never strays too far from the two-minute mark, but they're no Sum 41 cartoon. Yes they might shred their way through a song like Oh, but the lyrics are taking a scalpel to what sounds like a ferocious barney between two people looking for the exit. They might sound like a bit too much like Nirvana sometimes – Bughouse is a bit too close to Territorial Pissings and Forever could be Something in the Way – but when they step out of the shadows they rage with a sound all of their own.

Their finest moment here is Separate Ways, a song that marries a monster bass riff to a stepped-on cat of a guitar sound, but it isn't alone. There are earworms aplenty. Seams takes a single play to be a song you've known all your life (listen to it once and you'll be singing 'Nothing worthwhile should be easy!' – you won't be able to help yourself!). Against the World is as good as anything on Weezer's White Album (and actually, Rivers Cuomo could do a lot worse than cover these boys).

If Simon Cowell was to hear this record in the next couple of weeks, it's possible he'd choose one of these songs to be violated by his X Factor clowns come Christmas and then we won't be able to like Pinact any more. This is a very real and present threat. We may only have a few months to like Pinact before everything is spoiled.

Listen to: Separate Ways, Bughouse, Against the World