Warmduscher

When most bands get round to releasing album number live their sound, weighed down by expectation or having resorted to formula, has generally ossified. It might still sound good and fans will probably lap it up, but the days of adventure and exploration are quite often long gone.

 

Warmduscher are not most bands. Rather than closing up shop, on album number five – the magical Too Cold To Hold – they are most determinedly opening up. Taking on board the repetitive and polyrhythmic grooves of gqom (an alluring South African take on house music), adding in a dash of hip hop flavours and even jazz, and then harnessing that to their punk-funk, disco pogo, it’s a spellbinding mix that results in their best and most ambitious album to date. You could say they – the wonderful 12-legged groove machine comprised of Clams Baker Jr., Benjamin Romans Hopcraft, Adam J. Harmer, Marley Mackey, Quinn Whalley, and Bleu Ottis Wright – were, in fact, just getting started.

 

“I think we’ve realised we can hit the same emotional zone with different influences,” enthuses Ben about the 2024 version of Warmduscher . “We’re experimenting with

different ways of orchestrating the feeling of listening to a Warmduscher song and having the maturity to accept that a lot of the things that we like about ourselves are based on tonality and groove. It’s not just based on having a guitar that sounds fucked up.”

 

It’s not about forgetting everything you know about Warmduscher, then – they’re still an outfit proudly residing in la-la-land, where chaos reigns and their passionate diatribes and observational absurdities reveal the playful underbelly of modern life – but maybe looking at them from another angle. A diamond might look different in another light, but it’s still a diamond.