South London-based Hot Sauce Pony are Caroline
Gilchrist (vocals), Stephen Gilchrist (bass), Anna Dodridge (drums) and Ross
Davies (guitar) and after a string of acclaimed singles they've taken their
raucous grungy noise and turned it into one of the albums of 2019. John Robbins loves loads of things
about it, but he's narrowed his list down to these ten...
1)THE PINK ROCK PUNK ROCK COVER
Think the Pistols' ''Never Mind The Bollocks' or the
first New York Dolls album – you have to be pretty hardcore to dare to put pink
on your record sleeve, The retina
scorching front cover is only reinforced by the vaguely disturbing black and
white band portrait on the back, which seems to suggest the South Londoners may
have gone feral in a forest somewhere
and echoes the wild eyed stares on the back of another classic LP, Captain
Beefheart's 'Trout Mask Replica'.
2)WET PET SOUNDS
The band's single from last year 'What You Don't Know'
is basically a marital row brought to life, and all with the band's married
couple Caroline and Stephen Gilchrist shooting lines at each other. Among a lorryload of funny lines, our
favourite has to be Stephen's enraged boast: “I'm drowning your pets!” Don't try this at home kids.
3)'HO'-DOWN SHOWDOWN
Anna Dodridge's drumming cements the whole Hot Sauce
Pony sound, keeping what would otherwise be a chaotic racket (just about) on
the straight and narrow, Again, there
are lots of choice moments to pick from, but the tub thumping intro to 'Ho' is
as goof an example as any.
4) 'CRUMBLE'S X-RATED SIGNOFF
Caroline Gilchrist's throwaway last line to 'Crumble'
- a casual but sincere sounding “fuck
you, Crumble” - never fails to make us laugh
5) CAROLINE
GILCHRIST'S MYSTERIOUS LYRICS
Seemingly pieced together from snippets of subliminal
musings, there's no simple way to explain what's going on, but there's no
shortage of memorable lines either.
6)THAT
CLASSIC STEVE ALBINI SOUND
The band have played down the role of Pixies/Nirvana
knob twiddler Albini, who recorded and engineered – he never takes credit as a
producer – the album at his Electrical Audio studios in Chicago. There's no denying, however, that the impactful, raw sound is classic
Albini, a sound that will ring a pleasant bell of recognition with fans of
'Surfer Rosa and 'In Utero'.
7) THE SMALL BUT PERFECTLY FORMED 'BURNT ENDS'
It starts with a grungy warning shot of gnarly guitar
and bass and it ends a mere 70 seconds or so later, ending so abruptly it can't
fail to raise a smile. Nice touch.
8) THE
CHRISTMAS HIT – SORT OF
Er, well not exactly, but 'Christmas In Prison' is an
oasis of reflection and relative calm amid the squealing guitars and rhythmic
thrashing going on around it, It's got a
distinctly folky flavour, with Ross Davies switching his fuzzbox for nimble
finger picking while a violin weaves its way into the mix too.
9) 6/8 GREATNESS
'My Pet Hate In 6/8' certainly does what it says on
the tin, with a wonderfully lopsided groove and a structure that lurches from
fragility to brutality and back again pretty much without warning.
10) 'LOUDER'
TURNS IT UP TO 11
Hot Sauce Pony's resident guitar slinger Ross Davies
proves to be equally adept at evil riffing and intricate fretwork, but it's
when he starts stepping on the effects pedals that his sound truly goes into
orbit. Suitably enough, the album ends with the sound of one such climactic wigout.
More like the end of a particularly rabid gig, really, rather than a carefully
curated album, but we're not complaining.
'Hot Sauce Pony' by Hot Sauce Pony is out now on
Brixton Hillbilly.
Text by John Robbins June 2019
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