Taken from their fourth album, Outside, which was released yesterday, Bugs sees Brooklyn-based six-piece O'Death on fine, uproarious form. Suffused with their usual dark existentialism, this song, which opens the full-length, begins life as a slow, lilting alt.country jangle before changing pace and becoming a fiery, uptempo surge of gothic bluegrass-tinted folk. Wonderfully anachronistic, it sounds not just like the product of a time before electricity and God, but also a reaction to those very things, and all the ills and evils of our modern, homogenous society.
More than that, Bugs sparkles and flickers with originality and passion, its jaunty rhythm and melody offering a sense of forward-looking hope to temper the wistful nostalgia of the lyrics. Gently deranged, it's disturbed and disturbing in equal measure, a post-apocalyptic call to arms for a new day and a new world order, though one that's as internal and personal as it is external and political. A beautifully ragged and haunting song, it lasts for just over two minutes, but in that time it manages to conjure up an alternative universe full of desperate desolation and despair, before skulking off into the darkness just as quickly as it arrived.
Words: Mischa Pearlman
11:06 AM | 06/06/2011
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sorry i dont hear the goth..just a jangley tune in a minor key..i like it
Posted by paul at 1:45 PM | 06/06/2011 | Report Abuse
@Mischa Pearlman: Oh dear. What a self-important load of tripe. It took me longer to read your, "look at me, I am writing for Q!" review than to listen to that beautifully haunting song. The band and song should be the focus, not your ability to thumb through a thesaurus and create a garden of weeds from a barrow of flowers. Song: 8/10. Review: 1/10.
Posted by John Butler at 5:58 PM | 06/06/2011 | Report Abuse
@Mischa Pearlman Are there any drum n bass remixes of this track? There should be. This is weak.
Posted by Kara Simsek at 11:01 AM | 07/06/2011 | Report Abuse
I Disagree with grumpy John Butler, it's a nice review. Made me listen to the track closely, with more thought than the average reviewer provokes.
Posted by Dogandcat at 2:56 PM | 07/06/2011 | Report Abuse
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