Prolapse

Immediately battering us with a caustic and jagged, yet instantly recognisable and oh-so-welcome, guitar assault, Prolapse herald their studio album return after a quarter century’s silence in punchy, bombastic style.

The endlessly exhilarating chemistry that binds the duelling vocalists, unrelenting clashed riffs, and a thrumming rhythm section that never tires, comes to an enthralling head on anthemic centrepiece, ‘On The Quarter Days’, with a call and response chorus that’ll long outlive the sun.

Do you want it? Do you need it?

YES YES YES!

The fifth Prolapse album marks the band’s first new recordings since their last album, “Ghosts of Dead Aeroplanes”, released 26 years ago, but, in some ways, it feels like there hasn’t a break at all. From the opening incessant riff of ”The Fall of Cashline”, Prolapse set their stall out, hammering the message that they’re back, over and over (and over and over) again. The album cover is a photo of a broken mirror the band discovered in a skip in South London whilst on tour. If you look closely, you can make out blurred images of the vocalists staring into it. The first new sound to be heard from Prolapse this millennium, the opening beer can of ”On The Quarter Days“, the return single, perhaps gives an insight into the short, sharp, creative sessions that produced this album. Despite the elapsed 10 years of reformation Prolapse, now actually longer than they existed in the 90s, the time together has been all too brief, gigs every couple of years, writing sessions even rarer.

The album was mainly written in Leicester and recorded at Foel Studio in Wales. Some songs had been evolving for a few years whilst others (three on the album) were improvised and recorded on the spot, just like they’ve always done. Get ready, turn the microphones on, press record…. and something just happens. Perhaps channeling some of the ghosts that have previously recorded at Foel: Amon Düül II, the Groundhogs, Young Marble Giants, My Bloody Valentine and inevitably The Fall. “Err on the Side of Dead” is one of these songs; it grinds and gnaws away, gradually changing until Linda eventually yells “I hate, I hate, I hate”. The supernatural appears again, with “Ghost in the Chair”, perhaps the album’s stand out track, not exactly like the Prolapse you know, but very much the Prolapse you want to come back to now. It starts off sleepy and eerie, as a kind of displaced therapy session between Mick and Linda, before developing into a wash of noise near the end. The second single, ”Cha Cha Cha 2000”, brings Prolapse into a more dare we say ‘jaunty’ sphere, with Mick recounting a dreamlike escapade with Canned Heat, Donovan and Cat Stevens, not regular touchstones in the 90s, but time brings a new perspectives. The last words of the album are said by Linda Steelyard, recounting a tale of arriving at Leicester Forest East Services, and deciding to stay….forever.

For Fans Of: Unwound | Jesus Lizard | Ut | Huggy Bear| The Pastels | The Fall | Slint | mclusky