Iceland may be the land of volcanoes, wondrous vistas, and Bjork, but Henrik Bjornsson and his bandmates in Singapore Sling have taken their musical inspirations from horizons as far a field as Dick Dale, the Velvet Underground, and Jesus & Mary Chain. Powered by a triple-guitar assault that easily lives up to its droning, metallic potential, the Sling's ominous sonic assault can just as quickly morph into subtler shades of grey. "Feedback-drenched" does not usually connote a sense of adventurou...
Iceland may be the land of volcanoes, wondrous vistas, and Bjork, but Henrik Bjornsson and his bandmates in Singapore Sling have taken their musical inspirations from horizons as far a field as Dick Dale, the Velvet Underground, and Jesus & Mary Chain. Powered by a triple-guitar assault that easily lives up to its droning, metallic potential, the Sling's ominous sonic assault can just as quickly morph into subtler shades of grey. "Feedback-drenched" does not usually connote a sense of adventurous variety, but that's just the trick Bjornsson and company turn here time and again. Loosing the Lynch/Tarantino-ready opening salvo of "Overdriver," they periodically return to its-'50s-bad-boy-meets-surf-guitar-in-hell on "Listen" and the highway-ready instrumental "Roadkill." Elsewhere they tip their hat to Transformer-era Lou Reed on the sunny "Summer Garden" and turn the Standells' garage classic "Dirty Water" into marauding fuzz-fest. And while their influences may be readily deconstructed, the resulting haze of sonic somnambulism on this promising debut is shrouded in considerably more mystery. --Jerry McCulley Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
