Bugs Eat Books - At Sixes and Sevens

  by David McNamee

published: 11 / 2 / 2002

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Review

Being as non-committal as I try to be on these kind of things, Emo doesn’t mean a great deal to me other than possibly making a good product name for a brand of tiling putty, or denture gel. What the hell is the standard definition of ‘Emo’ now anyway ? Have we decided yet? But I guess my main problem with the whole current Emo thing is not the shoddy press coverage but the way that the bands themselves use the name as a defensive tag to pin to their music in lieu of any real benchmark of quality. Snobby pop punk, then. Pop punk in denial. What is nice though, is when an unassuming band sneaks through these trend barriers unannounced with absolutely no airs and graces and, y’know, fantastic songs always help a bit. Bugs Eat Books then will probably never become famous or be on the front cover of NME or play at the wedding of the brother-in-law of Alkaline Trio’s drum tech, but they do make quite gorgeous pop songs with jagged edges that sound like the most simple thing in the world (although if we were a little more lazy, and possibly on the AOL/Time Warner payroll, the term ‘emo Pavement’ might suffice) and are all the more lovely for it. Here are four of them, including future classic ‘Dead Batteries’, on a nice little 7” EP with sexy wraparound sleeve art. Bugs Eat Books. Nice.

Track Listing:-

1 Dead Batteries,
2 La Folie Des Lunettes,
3 B/W 8.16 (and time to kill),
4 Turncoat Redcoat