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Bad Nerves: Still Nervous
(Suburban)
Out 31st May 2024
Billie Joe Armstrong-endorsed Bad Nerves return with their second album, a dense racket of garage punk with an ear for hooks and melodies.
Last year, as the sun set on the Isalive festival in Madrid, debate raged across the punters that had gathered in the Spanish capital as to which band had delivered the best set. The votes fell into two camps; the raging and ragged political garage rock of Australia’s CIVIC, or the adrenaline-fueled hook-laden garage punk-pop of Bad Nerves. The arguments are still unsettled, but on hearing their new album, Still Nervous, it’s easy to hear why Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong has labelled them “the best band in England right now.” Their blend of fast-paced garage-punk, a keen ear for melody, all wrapped up in dense and distorted chorus-compressed filters that pitch them somewhere into Jay Reatard territory is right up his alleyway. When the band get it spot on, they are capable of producing some fantastic tunes.
Songs like You’ve Got The Nerve and opener Don’t Stop are proof, the former a standout on the album. It works so well because of the space that they afford it, the simple step of dropping instruments in and out, sparsity buttressed up against the riotous and chaotic bridge that drops into a simple chorus adding different shades and details. When they take that production and slap it on the pure punk-o-rama of Antidote, they are really on fire; a dense and rattled Marked Men straining at the leash. USA is a punch-the-air full-on attack while on the more powerpop leanings of Plastic Rebel and Alright, the production forces the melody to the fore, the band sounding somewhere between Nick Lowe, Protex, and The Briefs.
There are moments where it doesn’t quite hit the same high water mark, usually marked by slower songs such as Sorry where it all sounds a bit too busy for it to really shine, or Television with its more post-punk jutting and scattergun rhythm overshadowed by the density of sound that engulfs it. It can leave you straining to hear the song come through at times; they’re perhaps begging for the same treatment that they afforded the Radioactivity-like You Should Know By Now. Here, by stripping back some of that distorted haze and effects on the vocals, the guitars ring out more, easily differentiated and the song is made all the better for it. When they suddenly inject it with a moment of noise, it is still restrained ensuring that the song is King. It’s the same twist they pulled out with Electric 88 on their debut and one they could benefit from employing more at times. That said, across the album as a whole it works, dousing you with the energy they inject into most of the album.
Bad Nerves are on a high right now with constant tours supporting the likes of Royal Blood and The Hives, and, with Billie Joe Armstrong’s endorsement ringing in people’s ears, the release of Still Nervous should help put them on the road to bigger things. Whether this is a case of catching them in a small venue while you can or if they are future underground stars, time will tell, but for now, their star is certainly rising and they’re making all the right moves in all the right places.
Still Nervous is available now on pre-order.
Bad Nerves are online, on Facebook, X, Instagram, Youtube, and Spotify
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Words by Nathan Whittle. Find his Louder Than War archive here.
Nathan also presents From The Garage on Louder Than War Radio every Tuesday at 8pm. Tune in for an hour of fuzz-crunching garage rock ‘n’ roll and catch up on all shows on the From The Garage Mixcloud playlist.
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