Slug leader Ian Black is from Sunderland—about as far northeast as you can go in England before reaching Scotland—and he used to be a touring member of Field Music. The Brewis brothers engineered and played on Ripe, which was recorded at their small studio on the banks of the River Tyne and bears all the hallmarks of their flinching funk deconstructions. That connection is the obvious reason to listen to Slug’s debut, which works as a fine stopgap while Field Music work on the followup to 2012’s Plumb. But Black is more than just a caretaker, indulging the prog specter that only haunts the edge of the Brewises’ compositions.
Black dots his nervy songs with imperious choruses that owe a debt to Queen and Greek tragedy, and there are two lengthy instrumental interludes here: "Weight of Violence" is a muted steel drum dream that acts as a palate-cleanser, but "Peng Peng", a baroque piano suite that breaks into a yowling guitar solo, is a bit ostentatious in context. The best of Ripe maintains an invigorating tension between this introversion and theatricality: the pointillist percussion and surf guitar of "Sha La La"; the sleazy funk guitar that romps through "Cockeyed Rabbit Wrapped in Plastic", as Black adopts a passionless falsetto to indict the untouchable elite. On "Greasy Mind", he slithers between tightly coiled guitar parts, while "At Least" pairs a barbershop chorus with a searching, forlorn synth part that recalls the Specials’ "Ghost Town".
Slug’s debut took four years to make, but it feels right that it’s finally out a month shy of the British General Election—in his calm courtroom tone, Black spends much of Ripe criticizing electioneering and the deliberate narrowing of message for political gain. He sings in a combative, sly tone, condemning a single, repellent "you": the powerful character preserving the status quo to save his own neck on "Eggs and Eyes", the right-wing figures claiming to be the voice of the working class on "At Least". Whoever it was written about, it’s impossible to hear that song’s "creepy crawly fatigue of your mouth/ That does sup beer and shout" without thinking of Nigel Farage, the leader of the rising but hapless right-wing UKIP party, who is rarely pictured without a pint and his Cheshire Cat grin.
Contrary to the saying that good music thrives in bad times, the tenure of the right-leaning Conservative Party (in coalition with the left-wing Liberal Democrats) hasn’t provoked a particularly visible upsurge in politicized British music. But if the idea of hard times as a creative impulse was ever going to hold up, it’s in the North East, the area hit often hardest by government cuts. There’s little choice but to be self-sufficient 300 miles from London, a model that Field Music have pioneered. For all its minor stylistic differences, Ripe is very much forged in their image. But if any traditions in British indie rock are worth perpetuating right now, this inventive, engaged stable is the one to back.
