Downtown Runnin [LP]

In 2013 it's easy to find a band espousing "punk" aesthetics; less so a band whose creative modus operandi is to apply that kind of uninhibited and spiritually combative aesthetics to the songwriting process, without a nod to the sound and pageantry of the ostensible contemporary vanguard.Big French is that band. Their first full-length, Downtown Runnin, consists of eighteen short songs that burn out before becoming rote. Unmoored in the zeitgeist, the band covers a wide variety of material, from structurally complex power ballads "Would Not Try", "Downtown Runnin" to dreamy smears "Atlanta", "Whale", heavier postpunk "Ungungungungone" and arcade prog "Payback". As the album rushes through it's short duration, notes of disparate influences appear briefly, subsumed by the next; Big French is loath to sit still, whether stylistically, harmonically or in attitude.