“I am an Antichrist”.
Punk is about the antisocial, whether it’s Johnny Rotten’s heroic, neo-Romantic reactionary stance, painting himself as a twisted urchin version of Milton’s Satan, or your bog standard punk tearaway, using rebellion as an excuse to get smashed and not wash (and the hippies already had that down, ironically). The Cellar Family, comfortably one of the best acts to emerge from Oxford in the past two years, have a far more interesting take. On this EP, from the awkward Thomas the Tubercular Tank Engine chuffing of the opening, to the closing greasy feedback 17 minutes later, the tone is not antisocial, but asocial.
Like Seven’s reverse-Buddhist villain John Doe, or a slightly deranged Nazi scientist, the narrative voice of a Cellar Family song balances visceral disgust with a rigorously dispassionate eye: it’s no coincidence that the EP is bookended by tracks called ‘Oestrogen’ and ‘Testosterone’. This is not a love song, it’s a bloody biology lesson. Possibly extremely bloody. In a gallery of sociopathic rogues, ‘My Love Is Everlasting’ may well tell of a deranged serial rapist-murderer (whatever, it certainly won’t be on Julio Iglesias’ setlist any time soon), and ‘Secret Admirer’ is a stalker’s paean, crooning “nobody watches you more than I do”, along with a dubious celebration of “child-bearing hips”, which can’t help but bring to mind P J Harvey. Alternating between moments of dark comedy and harrowing viscerality, The Cellar Family has found a new way of embodying punk’s antagonistic stance.
Likewise, the music has more going on than might be immediately obvious in a bludgeoning punk racket. The drums are frantic yet tight, tumbling through the songs like Karl Burns on the early Fall recordings, and the way that Jamie Harris’ guitar slurs and bends the rhythms remind us unexpectedly of Graham Coxon on later Blur albums. This record shows how many more ideas The Cellar Family have beyond the punk template. ‘My Love Is Everlasting’ is a spiky update of The Blue Orchids’ spindly groove, whereas ‘What Did I Ever Do To You?’ is a wash of reverse reverb vocals, sub-aquatic bass and misty drums that sounds an awful lot like Pram, until the dyspeptic burst of the chorus rears its head briefly. Whilst Mclusky is still an obvious reference point, The Cellar Family have developed enough to offer a lyrical grimace and musical inventiveness all their own, and have possibly made one of Oxford’s records of the year in the process.