Search - Nerves :: New Animal

Avoiding the "The" before their moniker, Nerves play a just-raw-enough brand of lanky postpunk to merit having their name stand alone. Vocalist and guitarist Rob Datum might be nodding a tad to data nuts Pere Ubu (and prime data nut David Thomas) with his surname, because his pinched vocalic anguish certainly sounds like Ubu. The band's an unaugmented trio, lean and fierce, with a penchant for late-1970s punk that speaks volumes. They've avoided slick production and instead press hard on scrambled guitar soloing that recalls the Minutemen's late founder D. Boon. But there's also a tense shriek of the blues shooting through all Nerves songs, whether in the pulsing kick of "Cry, Cry" and "Get Me High" or the overall richly drawn, if ragged, guitar and bass interplay atop the hard-hit open rhythms of drummer Elliott Dicks. It's great to hear unreconstructed D.I.Y. punk spirit seething in such a rich measure. --Andrew Bartlett