Sports [7" VINYL]

There's breathtaking simplicity to the noise genre (or so some would have you believe). Either way, its name is descriptive, accurate and succinct. More often that not these days it's complementary too. Weekend, as a band name, is more anonymous, but their debut Sports is anything but. This is indie rock where indie still means independent, the stress is on rock - that rock is loud - and the whole lot is fuzzed out to hell.Galloping on relatively simple guitar and drumming, "Coma Summer" comes buzzed out to 11 (think My Bloody Valentine's own jet engine), and with Shaun Durkan's best exercise in disinterest echoing out atop the squall. Yet, though it might take an attuned ear to get it, it's the closely-guarded melody in the band's maelstrom that pleases most.Though "Youth Haunts" then appears to struggle in terms of originality - its post-punk bass work certainly suggests at Joy Division - it has dissonance levels enough to make A Place To Bury Strangers blush. This comparison is later compounded on the pummelling "Age Class", and, along with regular overloading of equipment, these concessions allow for Sports to keep fresh.As such, these San Franciscans continue to impress throughout. "End Times" bubbles once more with post-punk bass and a low-in-the-mix, back-and-forth vocal that more than brings Sonic Youth to mind. The change of pace in "Veil", which also peels back a few levels of static, as well as in the crushingly epic-sounding "Monday Morning" provides welcome, reverbed variety, and some might say respite. The latter's vocal melody is then reprised and comes to a head during the anthemic blow-out in "Monongah, WV".Just as Dinosaur Jr showed, just as Japandroids more recently did too, noisy enthusiasm is infectious. And, with a vision borrowed from Sonic Youth's  Goo , Sports culminates with "Untitled". It runs with heavily sludged guitars, borrows No Age's wind tunnel for recording purposes and daubs on enough feedback to induce pity for the equaliser.What they lack in band, album and track name, Weekend more than make up for in raw sonics. Indispensable.Advised downloads: "Monongah, WV" and "Untitled".

It seems i'm going to be the odd one out here (reviewer wise)....I usually really like noisy music but there also has to be some thread of a tune/structure to make it listenable and, for me, although there are some good ideas lurking beneath the cacophony they're just obliterated by the intense feedback that's employed on all the tracks."Coma summer" opens well with a riff that could have come from George Best era The Wedding Present but just when they should be fleshing it out with some semblance of a hook they play their JAMC feedback/distortion card, which if used selectively could have been great, but it just overpowers everything in sight (sound).The vocals are echoey and disembodied throughout and even when you can hear them they're fairly poor.It's a shame really as "End times" has a great New Order riff and "Age class" & "Veil" have some good riffs too but why they felt the need to bury all their hard work under the sonic mayhem seems peculiar. It's like painting a masterpiece and then drawing over 75% of it with felt tip pen, but maybe that obtuse action was their intent and i'm missing the point?

i brought this album on a amazon recomendation and i am well impressed -there are some epic songs here all are pretty impressive -a superb indie rock album , i would recomend to anyone who likes real music and not chart tosh !.

Killer album. Best in quite a while. Great way to end 2010 which has been a good year for high-energy independent rock like this.

This debut album by Weekend is pure genius, a must for all music fans who appreciate haunting musical menace. A band who take no prisoners with walls of shimmering guitar distortion & feedback combined with bass and drum grooves thats sure to get you rocking or gaze at your shoes in stunned silence. The vocals take you far into the depths of the music and surround you like an eerie echo. There are one or two short tracks where the album slows down giving you time to reflect on all that has gone before you, but don't get too comfortable as it just picks you up again and takes youn further into guitar, and 'musical' noise rock heaven.