I Heart Hiroshima Have Tuff Teef

Although it's two years old already, Australia's I Heart Hiroshima's debut album, Tuff Teef has just now found it's way to my desk. Australia's a few miles away...but even by USPS standards it shouldn't take as long as two years to get here. I suppose if it isn't the USPS taking forever than it is the music industry taking their sweet old time. They do have a tendency on dragging their feet so maybe it shouldn't be any surprise that it's just now found it's way to our shores. Slowness aside, Tuff Teef is still a record worth writing about despite it being a bit old.

I Heart Hiroshima exploded out of the Brisbane, Australia house party circuit in 2005 and quickly developed into one heck of a band. Sounding something like a whole host of American influenced indie rock brought to Australia via Britain, IHH remind me of Tiger, Urusei Yatsura, Prolapse, and maybe even the Llama Farmers in a horrific speaker crashing accident that involves far more shouting and atonal chord usage than recommended. Despite sounding about as raw as sushi and as produced as someone who records w/a four track TASCAM in their bedroom, Tuff Teefis a brilliant jagged indie rock record that clobbers you over the head with infectious riffs and tonsil injuring vocals.

A bit post punk and a whole lot of noisy, I Heart Hiroshima force their instruments into all sorts of angles and sounds that they shouldn't be making. The band then takes those peculiar sounds and manufactures an atonal sort of pop music out of them. It probably should happen this way but for IHH it works and works exceptionally well. The combination of girl/boy exclamations, pounded drums, and strappy slicing guitar riffs power the band into indie rock heaven.

While it sounds as if it were all recorded in a half-hour with about fifteen minutes of rehearsal time, Tuff Teef is a fantastic album. Tuff Teef's jarring sense of pop and craggy approach work well together and the results are songs that are rugged and a bit uneven that never quite disintegrate into insanity. I Heart Hiroshima started at a chaotic house party and they've come up with an album that sounds as if it were recorded at one. Tuff Teef is a frenzied drunken night of fun and that's not a bad thing every once and a while. Right?