Nervous Twitch – The Day Job Gets In The Way

Album number six, yes I said six. Nervous Twitch are a North Of England band on a mission to bring you more than barm cakes and brass bands, this is CBGBs meets The 100 Club in their heyday, this is music to catch your anger and throw it back at you with some added Glam. That’s not to say this is an album that will sort your world out, in fact it might pose more questions than answers, like how does ‘Knitting With Anger’ fit into all this?

I you had any trepidation on whether to lay your hard earned cash on the line for this album, well just get ya lugs round track one ‘Don’t Get In Touch’ and that will soon be a worry you’ll consign to the “wish I’d paid double” thought, a back to the seventies straight up Undertonesesque ear worm of a song, the guitar in this is, a you’ll find on most of this album, has that raw punk sound that you find on any iconic track from back in the day, there’s no fancy shit here. I’m not one for spoilers, but lets just say when you get to song number two ‘Game Your Playing’ with its stripped back Lovely Eggs sound (and this I say with as much love as it deserves), your gonna know that this is just the best fucking thing this band has ever produced, it has everything you want and more from a Nervous Twitch album.

Title track alert…..  ‘The Day Job Gets In The Way’ I think we can all understand the sentiment here, and why does this make the heady heights of album title then, well if you play or have any life around the music scene (unless you’re Ms Swift) will know how easy it can be to not make a living and need a real job to support it. As with the with whole of this album, it goes without saying its a bloody ridiculously catchy ear worm beast, and here is where ‘Knitting With Anger’ fits, its a simple concept of, when you find your self knitting angrily, don’t really know why, lets write a song about it, and make it about as angry as biting the head off a Jelly Baby. Talking about angry, the closest this album comes to this would have to be the 50 seconds of ‘Some People Have It All’, its high gain guitar drives this too much of every trait can be too much song.  But back to the lovely stuff, ‘Rolling With The Punches’  is about as positive as you can get in a song, its glam rock anthem sound grabs you, and makes everything just bloody great, this could have been written by Noddy Holder himself. 

One of the other things that’s constant throughout this thirteen tracks of brilliance is how it takes you back to when the wonderful Poly Styrene was playing with X-Ray Spex, the songs might not have the same lyrical themes, but the sound and the delivery is hauntingly as good. ‘You Really Let Me Down’ had this in spades, listen to it rail against someone with narcissistic tendencies, and tell me you don’t hear Poly singing this song too, in fact Erin has the same sense of purpose. Now to the stand out amongst so many stand outs, ‘Alright John’, a song about an ageing drummer who spends his time just wanting to do what he loves so much, even in later life it becomes almost like a comfort blanket, tapping away at any opportunity, I love how this song never heads of on any long and wining road, its stays to the point musically and lyrically, no bells or whistles just like everything in this album, why mess with simple perfection.

How do we end and sum up this album, well I read the band’s PR for this album, and most bands will say that they think this might be their best body of work to date, it’s not in there..  But it is their best album, seriously!! Oh and I nearly forgot, wait until you hear ‘Funny Bone’ fucking hell that’s the best track on the album!!  Or is it, hmmm so many.

The Day Job Gets In The Way is out on the 31st October via Spinout Nuggets and you can check out the band on Linktree, Facebook and Bandcamp.