Charm School is the latest project from Andrew Sellers and longtime collaborators Matt Filip, Drew English, and Brian Vega. The quartet release their latest four track Extended Play `Schadenfreude Ploy` this month, thirteen months on from their album `Debt Forever`.
Title track `Schadenfreude Ploy` is our introduction and it opens with some angular guitar riffs and blistering sax hues before we have a Mark. E. Smith esque diatribe which paints a cynical picture of modern economic anxiety, where paying bills and saving money never adds up to actual security. It`s a delightful, beautiful assault on the ears but not without its appeal. It morphs into more of a noise jam in the last forty five seconds of its life. In `Scene Queen` we have a riposte to somebody who seems to have enchanted the narrator but was it appears a shallow self-serving manipulator. Its all set over a brutal rhythmic auditory attack.
`Disgrace` is another rant about possibly an ex which opens quietly and builds in sound and intensity as it evolves, a wonderfully hypnotic listen with vocals that have an underlying unnerving intensity. The EP closes out with `Prime Mover Unmoved` which has a more positive slant on somebody close possibly a lover. It veers from quietly spellbinding to brief ferocious onslaughts and back as it progresses and sucks you into it`s penetrating beauty.
If life gives you lemons, rather than seething and raising your blood pressure by venting your spleen to blow of some steam, I’d suggest you invest in Charm School`s `Schadenfreude Ploy` EP and play as loud as you can. The word `Schadenfreude` even equates to deriving pleasure from another person’s misfortune and this EP could become a cost effective form of therapy for the nation in these difficult and disturbing times.
Rating 8.5/10
