You hear them at their shows, in dark corners. In the shadows, there are whispers. Nods of approval and murmurs of appreciation. “They’re good aren’t they?” “Incredible songs.” “Best band in town”. Brighton’s Patients have built a passionate following over the last 18 months, on the back primarily of being a stonking live act. In many ways, they’re an old fashioned group: happy to do it the hard way- winning over crowds, month by month, gig by gig.
Live, the influences appear fairly easy to spot: glam, a bit of post-punk. Suede rub shoulders with Slade. There’s a bit of T Rex in there, a bit of Pixies. On record it’s clear that there’s rather more to going on here than just loud guitars and wiggly fringes.
Single and opening track “Go Faster” is the latest in a long line love, pop and motorcycling songs that goes back through Ghost Riders to The Leader of The Pack, and the second-best* song of all time to speed up during the song. “White Goods” reflects the Gammonisation of British public discourse via a nifty domestic analogy: ‘from the dawn of time, a primordial slime, something rank and vile in the fridge’. “Like New” starts out as a headily medicated ukelele strum reminiscent of Skip Spence’s “Lawrence of Euphoria” before morphing into a tremolo-laden desert blues with a clanging guitar solo straight out of Television’s “Adventure” album.
What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is great songcraft. What makes this album rise above their indie peers is that Patients have mastered the swooning major key-minor key switches of classic folk-pop songwriting which have graced great pop songs from everyone from The Beatles to Abba, but is often curiously absent from the majority of blast-it-out indie rock. This is best exemplified on the gorgeous Goodbye Love: confessional, apologetic, melodic, aching.
If there is a criticism- and it isn’t really a criticism, more of an observation- it is that Patients have done what every guitar band does for their first album: they’ve recorded the live set for their debut. It worked perfectly well for everyone from the Shadows to the Stone Roses. And although engineer James Gasson has done a great job recording a muscular live set, one can’t help thinking that there’s something even more inventive in this band waiting to break out.
For now though, this is enough: a brilliant indie-guitar record, expertly done, and better than 99% of the records you’ll hear this year.
*The best song to speed-up is still The Triffids magisterial Lonely Stretch, which Nick Cave has made a highly successful career copying.