Dirty Beaches - Badlands

I had this down as indie-pop but in my advancing years I may be thinking of something else...Beach Fossils, or The Beach Boys maybe. Instead this is lo-fi scuddy rock that sounds exactly like a Suicide that have dropped their steam-driven synths and picked up electric guitars. The opener 'Speedway King' is a bloody brilliant terrifying blast of panicky claustrophobia. So good in fact that they attempt to repeat the trick on the rest of the album with less memorable results. You know that thing Suicide had where they sound like a post-breakdown Elvis Presley who has discovered punk rock? Well they have that in spades. They have also picked up the kind of late night paranoia that dogged Bruce Springsteen on the eerier parts of his 'Nebraska' album. What they don't have though is a single idea of their own except for the one that is lets re-create Suicide's back catalogue using the cheapest most shitty sounding equipment known to man. A good idea, I'll admit, but it gets a bit wearing across a whole album.