Review:

on 2011-05-15 CharlesMartel Said:

Tracking down this album proved something of a journey. Originally issued on an obscure Irish label, it was reissued in 2006 but proved almost impossible to locate. I thought I had found it on Amazon, but was actually sent a completely different album to the one advertised, even though the band name was the same, but was a completely different outfit. I finally managed to find a loose copy in my local record store and promptly purchased it.

Having mastered that first challenge, a second challenge then presented itself, a challenge more complex and less easy to resolve. You see, I had come to Whipping Boy via their second album, "Heartworm". That album had proven to be a classic of its era, with well crafted songs, excellent production and dealing with themes of incipient madness, alienation and detachment from society and social expectations. Although overlooked in their own day, Whipping Boy, largely on the back of "Heartworm", have come to be recognised subsequently as one of the better artists of their day.

And therein lies the challenge. How do you approach a bands first album, one you have never heard, without comparing it with their second, highly rated and much favoured second album? To approach it on the basis of comparison would be unfair, yet it is almost inevitable. As a result, I spent considerable time listening to "Submarine" to try to come to an opinion of it independent of its illustrious successor. The task, I admit, proved practically impossible.

There is no doubt that "Submarine" is a good album on its own merits. The band is tight and the songs are well put-together, though they might not be to everyone's taste. The downside of the album is the production, which is rather one dimensional. All the instruments and the vocals come out as having all been recorded at the same volume and mixed at the same level. This may or may not have been deliberate (I suspect it was not) but the result is that it has had a significant influence over the overall feel of the album. It comes across very much as a shoegaze album, with distorted guitars, indistinct vocals pushed to the background and heavy use of effects. Tracks such as "Favourite Sister", which is probably the best on the album, very much typify this effect. Indeed, the title track seems influenced by fellow Irish band My Bloody Valentine to a much greater extent than any other track I have heard.

It is at this point that you inevitably come back to comparisons. "Heartworm" was no shoegaze album and the production of it gave much greater emphasis to the distinctive voice of Fergal E McKee. So much so, that it was almost as if the album was forever teetering on the knife edge of McKee's own psychological demons. In fact, that feeling was what gave "Heartworm" its power and its drama. That power and that drama are lacking on "Submarine". It is almost as if the two albums were made by two entirely different bands.

Perhaps that is the best way to approach a review of "Submarine" when all you have heard before is "Heartworm". Imagine they are two different bands and treat them accordingly. As I have already said, "Submarine" is a good album. It is not a great one and the production is a serious flaw. But it has some good tracks - "Sushi" and "Bettyclean" are two others worth mentioning  and these make the album worth the effort in tracking down. The album is essentially a better quality shoegaze album, with a better band struggling to get out of that stereotype. Whipping Boy did not break the mould with "Submarine", but the album does demonstrate that they had the ability to, if only they could find the right medium to demonstrate their abilities.
Rating: 7/10