Though not as active as many of their peers, the legacy that Iron Chic have carved out throughout their career is unprecedented. Purveyors of some of the finest and most emotionally affecting punk rock of the last decade, the band’s follow up 2013’s extraordinary ‘The Constant One’ is just another master class in brilliant and wholesome songwriting.
What Iron Chic have always done exquisitely is create a very human and very distinct atmosphere. Their music feels like being hit by the salty spray that comes with standing next to the ocean, or the warm sun on the back of your neck as you drive at 100mph in the middle of nowhere. Their music feels like life itself taking on the form of riffs and beats.
There’s the acoustically devastating ‘Ruinous Calamity’. There’s the self-deprecating fuzz of ‘My Best Friend (Is A Nihilist)’. There’s the beautiful destruction of ‘To Shreds, You Say?’ and the satisfyingly breezy ‘Thunderbolts!’ It is an album that you will love even more with every single spin you give it, and one where you will find more of yourself in the more you invest in it. It’s the sort of album that will have you wiping away the tears when you don’t even know why you’re crying.
Iron Chic are woven from a very special cloth. Very few bands of this ilk manage to portray heartbreak, loss, depression and anxiety in such an honest, piercing and altogether rousing manner, yet ‘You Can’t Stay Here’ deals it out in abundance. Whether digging your nails into your palms as you listen on a busy train in the morning, or with your arms wrapped around your loved ones as you scream along in a drunken state of euphoria, Iron Chic have you covered.
4.5/5
‘You Can’t Stay Here’ by Iron Chic is out now on SideOneDummy Records.
Iron Chic links: Website|Facebook|Twitter
Words by Jack Rogers (@JackMRog)
