by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Bristol, UK based Neurotic Fiction is all wiggly vibes and subtle humor on their full length debut, Pulp Music. Due out Friday, November 16th via Specialist Subject Records, the band channel The B-52s with great results - interjecting tangled guitar chords with deceptively sweet pop hooks and a pulsating nerve that manages to twitch from the album’s infectious beginning to the end. While bands like London’s Goat Girl created an album of sour post-punk that played to the genre’s shadows, Neurotic Fiction work the brighter side, shimmering in the sunlight and melting like plastic under a heat lamp.
The band are adept at interweaving patterns, working their knotted pop into surfy reverb (“Generals”), jittery and rampant shifters (“Social Animal”), noir lullabies (“Bell Curve”), and retro garage pop (“Meaning of Lyf”). Throughout Pulp Music, the quartet add nuance and unexpected twists between the snaking rhythms and snapped-in-place guitars with the occasional shout, dense harmonies, and hypnotic backbeats. It’s an impressive debut with a locked in focus and razor sharp vision - sarcastic lyrics and tightly wound grooves leading the way.