Nerves: Dirty Fingers – Single Review
Self Released
Out Now
Feral, ferocious and frantic, noise-punk outfit Nerves return with a new track, following the acclaim for the 2024 EP Glorach, once again teaming up with producer Daniel Fox. Any good, though? MK Bennett says Oh, yes.
Thermite is a pyrotechnic composition of metal powder and metal oxide. When ignited by heat or chemical reaction, thermite undergoes an exothermic reduction-oxidation (redox) reaction. Most varieties are not explosive but can create brief bursts of heat and high temperature in a small area. Which brings us clumsily but pointedly to this new Nerves track, which is both explosive and a magnificent car crash of ‘90s noise rock and modernist production, Sonic Youth meets The Jesus Lizard Vs Thank. An exhilarating run through three decades of nihilistic wonder with a lighter touch than this amount of feedback would suggest, it’s rock n roll via Glenn Branca’s No Wave, a rumble through time to an updated Link Wray. It clatters like a bullet train with its bearings loose, while the drums keep it inches from chaos. An exercise in discipline and brevity
The West Irish four-piece has been promising big things. This delivers like a Prime subscription. Sometimes the gods of beautiful noise smile benignly upon us, and we can only be grateful and accept their bounty. “ Dirty Fingers “ is a track of immense splendour where your chosen volume will be rewarded with greater pleasure, depending on how high that volume is. It runs through the last four decades of recorded feedback like a thoroughbred pony, all gaunt and noble, even the pack horse’s sweat seeming effortless.
It begins a cappella (or at least without instruments) for a couple of lines, before the bass and everything else drop in like an implosion in a scrapyard, as if the Earth were trying to suck its contents inward. Like a deeply down-tuned AC/DC playing four different songs simultaneously, or a cover band performing Sonic Youth’s 100% while having it described to them in real time, this, like Patsy and Edina, is absolutely fabulous. Despite being only three minutes long, it evokes key touchstones like The Fall, The Dead Kennedys, and even the Young Gods in its short, sharp middle section.
Somehow punk, industrial, avant-garde and indie, it is much greater than the sum of its parts, at times a sheer wall of noise, with an unchained melody that never sits still but jumps in time with the rhythm, because it’s the drums that hold the whole thing together and allow it it’s freedom of movement, it’s glorious swing. It is such a joyous sound, too, now that the entire recorded history of Western music can be shuffled and mixed without leaving your bed, the possibilities of influence are endless, and younger bands have started to sound like they have unlimited scope. No boundaries beyond what they choose to play, all filtered through not only a primary chosen source, but all those half heard tracks that the algorithm put into play, a wealth of unconscious appropriation.
Certainly song of the month, possibly song of the year so far. You will not find a better use for three minutes of your time without appropriate lubrication. Whether this blast of pure brilliance can be bettered by the band, we shall have to follow with some interest.
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All words by MK Bennett, you can find his author’s archive here plus his Twitter and Instagram
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