{"id":5028,"date":"2015-08-16T22:46:44","date_gmt":"2015-08-16T21:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/?p=5028"},"modified":"2013-08-27T19:59:12","modified_gmt":"2013-08-27T18:59:12","slug":"eight-rounds-rapid-writeabout-steve-reviewed-by-longjohn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/eight-rounds-rapid-writeabout-steve-reviewed-by-longjohn\/","title":{"rendered":"Eight Rounds Rapid \u2013 Writeabout \/ Steve \u2013 reviewed by LongJohn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eight Rounds Rapid<\/strong> – Writeabout \/ Steve<\/em> (Podrophenia Records)<\/p>\n

\u2018Window-licking, channel-flicking, TV dinners, sniffing thinners, lotto playing, fare-evading, shoplifting, jumble sifting\u2019. These were the words that greeted me after 25 seconds of a mind shatteringly and latently violent twin assault of lead guitar and crashing drums from Southend\u2019s \u2018Eight Rounds Rapid\u2019. This month sees them unleash the blistering and swaggeringly catchy double A sider \u2018Writeabout\/Steve\u2019. This is the bands first ever release on vinyl and is limited to 500 hand numbered copies, and they claim that this is the only format that \u2018Writeabout\u2019 will be available on. \u2018Eight Rounds Rapid\u2019 have brought Thames Deltaesque rock n roll kicking and screaming into the 21st century.<\/p>\n

\u2018Writeabout\u2019 comes at you with both barrels well and truly blazing. This is a venomous slice of back to basics rock n roll, coupled with socially observant lyrics that sum up in a few neat sentences the current sense of apathy in that seems to have gripped many in Britain, but clearly not this lot. The flipside and fans favourite \u2018Steve\u2019 has an infectious \u2018Dr Feelgood\u2019 type groove with catchy guitar hooks and lyrics. This is a distinctively English sounding record, which is further emphasized by vocalist David Alexander who delivers lyrics like \u2018I don\u2019t know what to believe, so I am going round to talk to Steve\u2019 in his own regional dialect.<\/p>\n

2013 has proved to be an exciting year for the band after supporting the legendary Wilko Johnson on his recent farewell tour and rumours of an album are in the pipeline. \u2018Eight Rounds Rapid\u2019 have recently caught the attention of BBC Radio London and BBC Radio 6. Songs such as \u2018Dostoyevsky\u2019 and \u2018Channel Swimmer\u2019 have been wafting from the airwaves of the \u2018Gary Crowley Show\u2019 on BBC Radio London and from BBC 6 Music, with Mark Radcliffe, Gideon Coe and Steve Lamaq finding enough room on their play lists to give this band some well deserved airtime. If these plaudits are not enough then Tom Robinson has also added their track \u2018Channel Swimmer\u2019 to his latest Radio 6 Mixtape.<\/p>\n

I have heard that \u2018Eight Rounds Rapid\u2019 are influenced by their Thames Estuary forebears \u2018Dr Feelgood\u2019 and with Wilko Johnson\u2019s son Simon on lead guitar, complimentary comparisons like this are going to be made. However, let\u2019s sweep these generalizations to one side for a moment, as \u2018Eight Rounds Rapid\u2019 is no \u2018pastiche\u2019 to a bygone era. Their music is very contemporary sounding, tough, gutsy, passionate and belongs firmly in the moment, if you need evidence of this then you must listen to songs like \u2018Dostoyevsky\u2019, \u2018Stalker\u2019, \u2018Kix\u2019, \u2018Dirty\u2019 and \u2018Ryder\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018Eight Rounds Rapid\u2019 are playing at the \u2018Spice of Life\u2019 on 27th September 2013<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Window-licking, channel-flicking, TV dinners, sniffing thinners, lotto playing, fare-evading, shoplifting, jumble sifting\u2019. These were the words that greeted me after 25 seconds of a mind shatteringly and latently violent twin assault of lead guitar and crashing drums from Southend\u2019s \u2018Eight Rounds Rapid\u2019. This month sees them unleash the blistering and swaggeringly catchy double A sider \u2018Writeabout\/Steve\u2019. This is the bands first ever release on vinyl and is limited to 500 hand numbered copies, and they claim that this is the only format that \u2018Writeabout\u2019 will be available on. \u2018Eight Rounds Rapid\u2019 have brought Thames Deltaesque rock n roll kicking and screaming into the 21st century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":5032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[306,6,128,71,92,74],"tags":[729,121],"series":[],"class_list":["post-5028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-features","category-hot-plugs","category-music","category-post-punk","category-reviews","tag-eight-rounds-rapid","tag-eyeplug"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5028"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5035,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5028\/revisions\/5035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5028"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=5028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}