Named after a Dinosaur Jr song, Poledo’s Evan Clements sounds like he could give J Mascis a run for his money in the sounding-like-he’s-only-just-got-halfway-out-of-bed stakes at times. Certainly it sounds like he hasn’t had time to tune up properly, although such niceties would probably sound out of place across a demo that wears its ramshackle lack of sartorial musical elegance as a badge of honour.
Having previously gone out, briefly, under the name Balls (a moniker that would doubtless have condemned them to a life of being impossible to Google without incurring a written warning from anyone’s line manager), Poledo have already earned themselves a Nightshift Demo of the Month and, alongside Beta Blocker & The Body Clock, look like they’re spearheading a new wave of local ultra lo-fi noise pop. The important word there, though, is pop. Because this is no mindless rampage through barely-thought-out thrash. Instead, songs like ‘Death Of A Friend At The Hands Of Evil Robots’ and ‘All You Do’ are deceptively tuneful in the same way that Sebadoh so often were – hiding sharp, sweet melodies under such a welter of chaos and tinny echo that you have to squint your ears to make out the central theme beneath.
Best of the bunch here is the trebly, lurching ‘I Want To Be A Metalhead (Everyone Disagrees)’, which sounds like its ragtag melody accidentally stumbled across the rest of the song underneath a pub table at some point after closing time. After a bout of clumsy heavy petting all concerned wander bleary-eyed out into the night. It’s messy but oddly lovely. We hope they have beautiful babies together, and plenty of them.
Listen to the demo on Poledo’s BandCamp page.