Souls She Said...

So you wanna know more about the new Poptones signings Souls She Said?  Why not click below for the Art of Noise blog-spot on The Icarus Line and the side project which is Souls She Said.

One of the most obnoxious, provocative, spiteful, unhinged, brattish, amoral, cynical, vicious, violent rock bands around. And – naturally – one of the best.

A potted history. Vocalist Joe Cardamone and guitarist Alvin DeGuzman met at school in LA and formed a grunge covers band. By the time the pair were fifteen, that band had mutated into a hardcore-influenced outfit called Kanker Sores, guitarist Aaron North joining in 1996. When drummer Tim Childs was killed in a car accident in 1997, The Icarus Line rose phoenix-like from the flames.

The title of their 1998 debut EP, consisting entirely of Kanker Sores songs, gave notice of their raison d’etre: ‘Highlypuncturingnoisetestingyourabilitytohate’. ‘The Red And Black Attack’ appeared the following year, a similarly succinct description of the experience of witnessing the black-shirt-and-red-tie-clad maniacs in action. Drummers continued to come and go with ‘Spinal Tap’-esque regularity, and in 2001 they re-emerged with debut full-length LP Mono, an insanely intense mash-up of The Stooges, The Birthday Party and Black Flag.

Their status as a notoriously unhinged prospect live was cemented by a gig at the Hard Rock Café in Austin in 2002 when North decided mid-set that he fancied swapping guitars. The only problem was that the guitar in question used to belong to legendary Texan bluesman Stevie Ray Vaughan and was on display in a wall-mounted glass case. North cracked it open with a mic stand and all hell broke loose. Most bands leave the SXSW Festival clutching a lucrative recording contract; The Icarus Line came away with death threats.

And then, in 2004, after yet more line-up changes, came second album Penance Soiree, prefaced by another marvellous statement-of-intent single, ‘Up Against The Wall Motherfuckers’. The familiar reference points are audible, but this time they’d gone much further. The record is a masterful pillaging of the graveyard of rock ‘n’ roll history. The corpses of everyone from Black Sabbath to The Jesus & Mary Chain and Suicide are gleefully exhumed and reanimated in thrillingly noisy and discordant style.

Perhaps most remarkable is the nine-minute-long monster ‘Getting Bright At Night’, an awesome tribute to a love of Spacemen 3 which features the lines “I don’t wanna fall in love anymore / But I can’t stop falling in love” and concludes brilliantly with Cardamone imploring “Never give up on me babe”. A glimpse of humanity, and this from the band that once gave away a 7” single called ‘Kill Cupid With A Nail File’ at a Valentine’s Day gig.

And yet despite Penance Soiree’s brilliance and the endorsement of a whole host of bands with whom they’ve toured (Queens Of The Stone Age, Primal Scream, …Trail Of Dead, Yeah Yeah Yeahs).

The Icarus Line are that rarest of beasts: an utterly untamed rock ‘n’ roll band. As their associate Travis Keller wrote in their 2004 biog: “At times it feels like they are the only punk band left. You might say their ethos, sense of integrity, confrontational nature of their performances, and their belief in what they do is very punk rock. They sound like what dangerous rock music should sound like”. Amen to that.

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