Deaf Wish – “On” (video)

Ian King: One point for Melbourne being the new Seattle. One point for being on Sub Pop with METZ and Pissed Jeans, where the band probably belong (a tour featuring all three, please?). One point for disguising a shoegaze song as a hard-charging punk tune. Five points for the 30 seconds of improvisational guitar noodling underlying the breakdown before the end. [8/10]

Paul Duffus: You’ve got to admire the gall of the wish to brazenly peddle such unapologetic “record collection rock'”, as Simon Reynolds put it. Quoting another writer’s term for rock which distinctly quotes other rock seems appropriate when presented with a bowl of sad, watered down, thrice digested retro drool like “On”, a track which struts along in shades and leather and borders on the parodic with its cleanly scuzzy drones and mentions of “teenage fiction” and “strange poetry”, lyrics of ‘Mary Chain-level pastiche. You know there’s a rumour that you can still buy actual Velvet Underground records? Yeah. There are shops which sell them. And it seems like until they run out and every copy of every VU record and every digital file and every analogue trace of the VU has all turned to dust — or whatever digital files turn into — there is really no need for something like “On” to exist at all. [3/10]