Dalston, London's Male Bonding are one of the more recent Sub Pop bands that wouldn't have sounded out of place on the label 20 years ago. While certainly not a grunge band or sounding like Nirvana, they are lo-fi, raw, noisy, and indie rock enough to make you think that this band has always been on the label. While not totally indie rock the band leans enough of that way to fall into that camp while maintaining a slight Britpop bounce about them. Their second album, Endless Now, is yet another brilliant spiky pop record that owes as much too British stalwarts Ride as it does Dinosaur Jr.
With dirty guitars amped up and syrupy melodies that will haunt your dreams, Male Bonding are a spastic trip to a world in which Doc Martens never stopped being popular and floppy fringe is still cool. Endless Now is sweetly cacophonous stuff that sounds like pop probably should. This is an absolutely fantastic record that takes melodies and thrashes them around into a dizzying formula of fantastic songs.
A bit more polished than their debut and with altogether stronger songs, Endless Now sees Male Bonding upping the ante tenfold. This, simply put, is an awesome album that's hard to let go. With all the spiky guitar washes and sighed melodies that sound like an Angloamerican indie behemoth Male Bonding's Endless Now is one occasion when British and American culture are not separated by a common language. More than likely one of my favorite albums of the year.
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