The Total Rejection – The Time Traveller’s 3rd Will & Testament
Raving Pop Blast! Recordings
LP – CD – DL
The Total Rejection have emerged from their lair in deepest Bristol to release their third album, which ‘ builds on the raw sound of it’s predecessors with a further blast of psych n’ roll. Tremelo and wah wah pedals get abused to squalling effect, Keith Moon-esq drums clatter and the Hammond wails. It’s ALIVE! And THRILLING!’ Sounds like a blast, so Fighting Boredom had ourselves a listen, see what we thought below.
This is the third Total Rejection album and before it was released their leader was already telling us that the next one was going to be better, a pattern that has followed every Total Rejection release to date. In fact, one of the things I love about The Total Rejection is the total honesty and self awareness they give out over Facebook. But on the strength of this and the last two records, as long as they keep making them I’ll keep buying them. They are all great nuggets of garage rock. They belong on a lost festival stage in the sunshine with the likes of Barracudas and Tall Boys and their music echoes a deep endearing love for the underground. You can’t say that people don’t make records like this anymore as somewhere someone is. But this is a record outside the groove, and set back from the road.
This has got everything you need from a Total Rejection record, shuddering, shimmering, echoing, wah wah and reverbed guitars all over it, not all at the same time. Rock’n’roll kicking, stuttering and hipshaking drums, alongside the bass keeping us all moving and shaking. The organ swirls and confuses and the usual odd sounds just keep coming. The vocal still sets them apart, it’s a low throated whisper of a growl, strained out at times and laid back at others, it’s the voice of a man doing what he loves, making music that exists in his soul and he has no choice but to get it out.
Thank whatever Rock’n’roll Gods you look to that they keep on getting the music out because the world still needs records that sound like they’ve been made in a week by lunatics wearing pointy shoes and pebbles haircuts.
The Total Rejection’s fourth album may well be better than this one, but for the moment, this is the best. So go find it.
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The Total Rejection are on Facebook. You can get hold of the album on the Raving Pop Blast Bandcamp page.
All words by Adrian Bloxham.