WRIST

 Biography

It seems it's become so much harder to focus properly in this speeded up world.  The Wrist! story is one at odds with the ways in which most folks’ neural structures have ended up these days: wired as they are to either constantly crave novelty or else switch off.  In the world of Wrist! there seems to be little sense in buying three for the price of two, when they know the joy to be had is in savouring one.  And so it is that Wrist! have nagged away at me for some years now.  I recall unexpectedly receiving a cassette tape of their first ever rehearsal one November morning at the tail end of the ‘90’s. I’ve still got it somewhere.  It’s as messy as you might expect.  However, as Wrist! burned their way through song after song, I felt my heart struggling to escape my body that morning.  I suppose it was about me wanting to share ‘the news’ with people I knew would eventually get it as bad as I had it at that moment.  I saw their singer, Mr Davison, express what I took to be a similar feeling when Wrist! made their debut stage appearance in Brixton towards the end of that millennium.  Mr Davison's celebration of ‘the news’ that night, during the pounding false ending of their first single ‘The Way I Feel’, was so protracted that he had to be wrestled to the floor in a bathrobe and carted off the stage in order that the venue could close for the night.  This sound of the nascent Wrist! was captured on two singles they did for Sound Archive Recordings a few years back: ‘The Way I Feel’, all spastic rhythms set against the punk pop-regret of ‘Beautiful Sunsets’.  Peel listened, but the rest of the world speeded up again once the novelty had worn off.  It was a year or so later that I heard Wrist! had decided to abandon singles in favour of patiently piecing together a four-album box set.  During this same period there were notable, if somewhat clandestine live affairs, including a memorable headlining solo performance at the 2004 Edinburgh Festival.  However, for me, it was a show I caught in Birmingham that was to prove pivotal to the band’s development.  I’ve got a photo of the singer, Mr Davison, from this gig.  It's a study of fury, at odds with the music.  He points out at the crowd all sinew and bulging veins, stabbing at each syllable of the song he is singing as it appears on a projector screen. I’ve never been sure whether he intended this gesture as an attempt to connect or as accusatory.  Anyhow, I’m looking at it now.  His eyes burn into a space somewhere unsettling behind you.  The point I’m working towards here is that behind the idiosyncratic pop stylings lie lyrics which can perform circus tricks that knock the world off its axis.  It was there, in Birmingham, that I saw this passion foregrounded.  For me, this was the night Superman Descended. And now these stories of lives, planets and recollections being casually erased from the map in a world of “strange relations” appear on his forthcoming ‘Scum of the Earth’ album.  Receiving the masters of this album earlier in the year was another of many defining moments in my relationship with this wonderful band.  It’s a flawless collection of unselfconscious, beautifully skewed pop and aching balladry.  And it has a killer title to boot! I’m not afraid to say it, when listening to it for the first time I both laughed and wept bitterly at Mr Davison's observations of beauty in a world slowed down.  Believe me, ‘it’ is actually out there! 

                         Bob Wire