Couch Slut – You Could Do It Tonight
Release Date: 19th April 2024
Label: Brutal Panda
Bandcamp
Genre: Noise Rock, Noise Punk, Experimental, Horror.
FFO: Ken Mode, Chat Pile, Daughters, Eye Flys.
Review By: John Newlands
Two weeks ago, I was picking out some new releases to write about. I picked two, then just as I was about to close the list, a name caught my eye. Couch Slut. My curiosity was peaked, “oh golly gosh, what the fuck is a couch slut?” I asked myself.
A few seconds later, I’d fired up my streaming service and fell in love with what I found. My first listen was The Donkey. It’s a song about, taking drugs, making a stop-motion animation, dolls having sex and blood, lots of blood, closed out with a weird-ass declaration of love. Perhaps there is something wrong with me, but I immediately started to laugh. What the actual fuck was this!? It’s both brutally heavy, crazy, honest, weird and ultimately brilliant!!! I’d stumbled onto audio gold!
Ten minutes later I was diving down the perverse, fantastical crazy 39-minute long wonder-hole that is You Could Do It Tonight.
The album opens with Couch Slut Lewis, and straight off the bat we are met with controlled guitar feedback, a HUGE punchy bassline and a driving drumbeat before vocalist Megan Osztrosits kicks in with her flesh stripping scream. There are some guest vocals on this track from Zachary Ezrin (Imperial Triumphant) and Doug Moore (Pyrrhon), one of which (not sure who) delivers a death growl so low I just about shat my pants. Brown note achieved.
Track 2 is Ode To Jimbo, a love song about a bar frequented by the band, then followed up by Wilkinson’s Sword, a cheery track about self mutilation and a love for this brand of razor blade. Dark stuff. That said, the guitar riff for this track works as a fantastic counterpoint to the lyrical content. It’s almost a wacky, upbeat fun-fare lead guitar noodle that is punctuated with sections of double bass drum and straight up power cord riffing. Track 4 continues the intensity of previous tracks. The Donkey, mentioned above, is a partly spoken word number about dolls blood and unrequited love. I find it both disturbing and hilarious in equal measures.
From here Couch Slut lead us nicely into Presidential Welcome featuring Steve Blanco (Imperial Triumphant) on piano, vocals credited to Joseph Bone (a filmmaker friend of the band), synth by Greg Greenerg and trumpet by guitarist Amy Mills. This track is, as you can imagine, is predictably weird and wacky. It’s a piano driven spoken word piece that delivers a pause from the carnage that preceded it and graciously welcomes us “to the B-side” of You Could Do It Tonight and ask us politely to “crank it up”. You don’t need to ask me twice!!!
Moving into the back side of the album, we are thrown back into the deep end, with high pace Energy Crystals for Healing, which is another dose of the bands well crafted madness. There is a ferocious sense of urgency to this track which leaves the listener with a feeling of unease and discomfort. Couch Slut don’t let up here, and throw us right into Downhill Racer, probably the most upbeat and straightforward song on the album (in terms of instrumentation and songwriting). This track again features those death growl vocals found on Track 1, which manage to scare a little bit more of the shit I never knew I still had in me into my pants. More underwear required.
Track 8, Laughing and Crying, is a festive treat about a Christmastime home invasion. The track is inspired by an experience of drummer Theo Nobel where he was held at knifepoint while in a home robbery while on holiday in Argentina with his friends. There are sleigh bells somewhere in the mix of all the noise and madness, to give us a taste of that special holiday feeling. A touch of humour, again used as a counterpoint to a fucking horrible situation being described.
Album closer is The Weaversville Home For Boys, is the longest and most adventurous track on the album. Coming in at just under 7-minutes, the band are flexing their progressive muscle here, testing the limits of what they would normally do, but not going too far off the track of what makes this a Couch Slut song. Here, they weave a fantastical horror story about an abandoned home for boys and an encounter with escapees while driving one dark night. It’s predictably dark and as visceral as everything that preceded it on the release, and a great album closer.
I adore the production on this album, the bass is dirty and punchy, the guitars squeal with controlled feedback, there are pounding drums and glitching synths which all perfectly complement and present the wonderful vocal delivery from vocalist Megan Osztrosits. I’ve checked out the bands back catalogue now, and You Could Do It Tonight is really a level up from everything they have previously released, with the spotlight not truly shone on Osztrosits with her sitting much more forward in the mix.
And about the vocals….well, the vocal delivery and the storytelling on You Could Do It Tonight is what really hits home for me.
It’s not often that a screamed vocal can both sound so visceral and brutal, but also have a clarity which makes it mostly understandable without a lyrics sheet. As mentioned, the storytelling is phenomenal, it pulls you in to this bizarre, dysfunctional fucked up horror show world. For me, artists like Nick Cave have this ability to weave a story that pulls you in, so no matter what the instrumentation is doing, it’s the vocal that is the main “pull”. To craft and weave these horrible tales of self mutilation, violence and horror in a way that is so captivating is no mean feat.
This is my jam. I’m in love with a slut. A beautiful, dirty, crazy Couch Slut that I wouldn’t change a thing about, and I don’t care what you or my mother thinks.
(5 / 5)
