Overlooked Albums no4. The Icarus Line - Penance Soiree

Back when I was in mid secondary school, I had a huge obsession with The Icarus Line, mainly because of their first album "Mono" and their reputation as modern punks biggest set of assholes. Back when I was about fourteen, I thought there was nothing cooler than stealing display guitars from the hard rock and giving The Strokes tour bus a new color scheme. Even to this day I can't argue that "Mono" is a fantastic exercise in molding clever if slightly obvious influences in to complete aggression. However unless the band can create one hell of a come back in the next few years, they're going to go down as one of this eras biggest could-have-been bands. Guitarist and the bands most violent member Aaron North quit the band to join Nine Inch Nails and no one's heard much out of them since.

"Penance Soiree" was The Icarus Line's major label debut, obviously they'd gotten sick of sleeping in the gutter after every show. So all of us eager little mid pubescent fans had faith that despite the "selling out" they'd still be as raw as ever. Problem was, when Penance Soiree came out they'd completely changed their sound. By no means was it something to make their label happy, if anything this new awkward take on drone-rock and shoegaze was even harder for the majority to swallow than the Born Against meets Drive Like Jehu punk of the first album. But none the less, I and every other idiot who was in need of their musical bratty yelping were not pleased. Clearly we thought The Icarus Line should spend their time making the same album over and over until the act wore thin. Looking back now I understand completely why I didn't like the record at the time but it also makes me feel slightly stupid. "Penance Soiree" is musically and conceptually better than the angsty debut. The whole album takes The Jesus & Mary Chain root of bathing great melodies so far in to distortion that it's hard to even notice that they're there. "Spit On It" could be the finest recording the band ever did/will do and "Party The Baby Off" with it's constant repetition of "take off all your clothes" is one hell of a sleazy album closer.

The Icarus Line - Spit On It
The Icarus Line - Virgin Velcro
The Icarus Line - Party The Baby Off

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