We Love You

Leeds noise-rock and DIY linchpins return with their first album in ten years. If a band keeps it together for long enough music isn't just made, it grows. Bilge Pump are at that point with We Love You, their first album in ten years and perhaps their most accessible one to date, accessible only because people are admitting that they were ready for them all this time, listening to the likes of Marc Riley and taking notice. "Wheel Of Yew" - it's PiL bass lines, Spacemen 3 guitar, and a blistering Butthole Surfers-esque solo are all held together with the tightest drumming this side of Bill Ward, as you'll witness guitarist Joe O'Sullivan take in a brisk autumnal walk with his dog Dolly from Otley to the top of Ilkley Moor. They have spent a while getting this album right, writing songs that describe a world where the council let's it rot and the kids make trouble, or sometimes music. A guy goes into a shed to build a guitar pedal and accidentally invents a time machine, ending up millennia back thinking about his future exes. Complex drum and bass arrangements emerge and the songs have to be reconsidered. The guitar needs something... better build a couple of amps to get that just right. "The Passion Of The Kid" is a live favorite developed out of Can style, four-and-a-half hour jam. Featuring a relentless two-note bass line, that somehow never gets boring, it provides the backbone for a lyrical diatribe on Brexit Britain. On "Me No Like", commentary is offered on the futility of the modern working man, "Ask anyone getting smashed in here, 'How agreeable do you find wearing a shirt and tie?'" "Manzana de la Discordia" follows a similar theme, a scenario of being reduced to spending an enforced holiday staring at a wall, reflecting upon life and the edibility of the fridge's contents.