{"id":41185,"date":"2014-07-04T20:27:54","date_gmt":"2014-07-04T20:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejoycollective.co.uk\/blog\/?p=41185"},"modified":"2014-09-05T18:10:57","modified_gmt":"2014-09-05T18:10:57","slug":"tender-prey-tequila-worm-ep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/review\/tender-prey-tequila-worm-ep\/","title":{"rendered":"Tender Prey – The Tequila Worm EP"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tequila<\/a><\/p>\n

A taster for a long-overdue full album, Tender Prey\u2019s welcome recorded debut is a three-track, ten-minute EP which teases with its brevity and stripped-back sound but quickly establishes its mood. It\u2019s the smell of the air on a fourth consecutive hot day, half an hour before the storm comes; intoxicating and disorientating, a harbinger of elemental changes on the horizon.<\/p>\n

The title track opens on bluesy chords and a languorous Shangri-Las vocal, a conspiratorial coo familiar to anyone who\u2019s seen Bryon silence a chattering room with an opening line. Stirring up a dust-dry and hazy atmosphere, it\u2019s little surprise that thoughts turn to the bottle.\u00a0 Amid the raised volume and wordless squalls and shrieks, the chorus laments (or salutes) an eternal cycle: “We drink to forget \/ we drink to dance \/ we drink to forget again”. Other than a few shakes of percussion it’s a spare, grubby Rid Of Me <\/i>style blues, captivating and visceral.<\/p>\n

It reflects her more recent solo shows, where a renewed confidence in performing means she demands your attention.\u00a0 Even at her least structured, most musically fragile she’s an elemental, intimately powerful performer; the guitars have a loose, languid three-beer quality, ringing and crackling in the choruses.<\/p>\n

‘Strong Feelings’\u2019 elliptical, double tracked vocals have a slightly disorientating imperfection, not quite tracking each other directly (or maybe it\u2019s these cheap headphones).\u00a0 A confident swagger and playfulness here that recalls Kim Deal, with a grinding garage riff that\u2019s loose and spacious and a brilliantly cheeky payoff on the chorus hook.\u00a0 Like Deal\u2019s most intimate moments, it\u2019s also fun<\/i>, a devilish grin almost audible as the open chords clang and the needle clatters into the red.<\/p>\n

The fragile, bluesy balladry of \u2018Hold Me Down\u2019 is the most reminiscent of Good Fortune Sounds<\/i>, the 7\u201d released as Le B in 2009.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fragmented, gently winding thing that flares briefly and brightly with a slender, deliberate solo riff backed by an otherworldly choir of Lauras.\u00a0 Here she\u2019s cautious, edgy, the closest she comes to displaying any vulnerability on the EP.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a logical bridge between the relaxed yet perfectly poised one-take sketches of Good Fortune Sounds <\/i>and the stormy, bluesy full-band stuff we can expect from the album proper.\u00a0 That album <\/i>arrives on Finders Keepers offshoot Bird Records later this year, and \u2018Good Wife\u2019 appears on the beautifully packaged label sampler cassette Crystal Plumage<\/i>.\u00a0 Both that, and this fine EP, are recommended purchases while you sharpen your talons in readiness for the main event.<\/p>\n

Buy: http:\/\/tenderprey.bandcamp.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Tender<\/a><\/p>\n

Tender Prey photo by Kirsten McTernan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A taster for a long-overdue full album, Tender Prey\u2019s welcome recorded debut is a three-track, ten-minute EP which teases with its brevity and stripped-back sound but quickly establishes its mood. It\u2019s the smell of the air on a fourth consecutive hot day, half an hour before the storm comes; intoxicating and disorientating, a harbinger of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[459],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}