Smirk always kinda stood apart from the pack of 2nd wave eggpunk groups in as much as there always appeared to have been some tension going on between the more upbeat and quirky egg-ish vibes and a much darker post punk undercurrent in many of their early tunes, a trait they went all-in on for the first time only on last year's incredible Domestic Dog 7", just in time when their previous trajectory, as well as that of much of their eggpunk surroundings in general, started to show serious signs of diminishing returns. Its two tunes put them more in the neighborhood of essential post punk pillars of the Institute, Marbled Eye and The Estranged variety and the shit worked just admirably 'cos these impressively elaborate and balanced tunes absolutely held their own and so does everything on this new LP now, their most sober and earnest set of tunes to date, showing all the hallmarks of another eggpunk outfit hatching into a full-blown chickenpunk group in a way that i'm sure would make ex Lumpy dude quite proud, even if i still think he's got the whole chicken-and-egg problem upside down. In all these cases, clearly the egg was there first and these eggs need to have room to exist and be bred and flourish in order to mature into the kind of beauty we see right here. Damn does that sentence make me sound stupid and pretentious. I better refrain from typing any more random words now.
