Cat’s Claw Records – 08 Jun 2021
Short sharp shocks of super-tight Skate punk from Brighton’s Making Friends.
A Beginners Guide is the latest EP from Brighton based four piece Making Friends. Released on a limited run of 50 Cassettes, the B side features their previous EP Bonk!, which initially came out earlier in February of this year.
Formed in the summer of 2020 they play an exceptionally tight, melodic variant of skate punk. You could be forgiven for imagining that this was music straight out of California but for the slight Southern, (English Southern that is) twang of their singer’s vocal delivery. The songs are no-nonsense, rambunctious affairs with all the fat trimmed off; the longest track clocks in at 2:50.
Things kick off with “Goodbye Forever,” a track that muses on the feelings of lassitude and disappointment. The fairly shouty yet melodic vocals capture a sense of striving after happiness but ultimately failing, “why am I unhappy, when things could be so much worse.” This song lays down the template for the subsequent three tracks; pumelling drums, fast but melodic guitar lines and recrimantory lyrical content, whether focused at the self or externally. “Ant” is perhaps the best showcase for the impressive propensity Making Friends have for razor-tight syncopation. All the instruments and the vocals work in near perfect unison for this angry missive against a former friend. Blending a slightly snotty pop punk aesthetic with precise stop-start riffs and drum fills, the track ends A Beginners Guide on a high.
If the first side is marked by brevity the second is practically rattled through at warp speed. As an earlier release Bonk! does feel a little less polished. However it doesn’t necessarily suffer for this, the band managing to encompass a number of reference points into songs that barely exceed a minute apiece. The first two tracks are more snippets of sound. The amusingly titled “Nice Set Dude (can I borrow your amp)” is a full 12 seconds of rapid fire noise. “Short Story” channels the scratchy chug of Ska Punk, with a bouncy cadence keeping things a little lighter. Finally, “Whatever happened to my enthusiasm” rounds things off with another blistering track, that is certainly enthusiastically played even if the lyrics suggest otherwise.
The two EPs are a solid exposition of a band who are clearly slotting into their sound. They may not especially be breaking new ground but these are tightly wrought stabs of energised punk. Making Friends describe coming together with the explicit aim to ‘blast onto the DIY punk scene as soon as venues reopened.’ That now looks to be happening, albeit tentatively, and this is where it feels like they will excel. The fast-paced attack of their tracks would be perfectly suited to a rowdy crowd in a basement venue smelling of stale beer and sweat. The sort of gig where you would not be at all surprised to hear a request to borrow an amp. Let’s hope that they are able to see through this ambition because we could all do with the permanent return of the frenzied catharsis of live music.
