HONEY Love Is Hard LP

      When hearing the names Psychic Ills and Amen Dunes, I usually think of laid back cats who listen to the third Velvet Underground record as church service and always wondering how high it takes to get Spacemen 3 high. Y'know, something shaggy for sure and a with a laid back sway most definitely.
     Opening track "Monk" (see above) quickly throws such assumption out of the window though. A battering thwack of sound, the song is quite akin to an agitated Volcano Suns crammed into a barbed wire lined pen and being poked at with sharp sticks. Next thing you know they've broke free, cranked up "Taking A Ride", stolen your car and seeing how well the suspension holds up as they aim straight into some molten pit. That kind of hair whippin' rock action/bad scene celebrating permeates like the skunkiest of bud on the record's closer "White City" too but instead of a kicked in the face boogie it's a freaky metallic moldering.
     For anyone out there awaiting another wave of RAWK bands Love Is Hard may be, thankfully to these ears, a bit askew. While a song like "White Noise" may have a fist pumpin' foundation and an orgy of wah-wah happening, it sounds like they'd be more inclined to kick holes in the monitors than they would be putting a foot on top of them and striking a pose so people can check out their crotch. Also, when the band takes off into a space trip like on "Born" and "Comes Down", the re-entry back to this atmosphere is rough and fiery.
http://thebandhoney.blogspot.com