The Thousands

Chrome Dome’s pass at the commonest subjects of outsider music – misanthropy, deadened feelings, self-hate and insanity – is brilliantly skewed, catchy-as-heck and potentially disturbing. The local duo makes a rattling, drugged-disco chug with heavily intoned suicide-note lyrics, machine sounds in spasm, atonal synthesiser step-melodies and eerie, childlike tambourine accompaniment melting down as the sound of mental disintegration: chilled, deathly, tinted with hysteria and madly funny.**Negative Vibes is the band’s first release and has three tracks playing out like the stages of a stalker killing – premeditation, murder and then empty desolation. ‘Negative Vibes’ starts with darting-eyes pace and spoken thoughts: ‘She’s scared / He’s aware’. ‘Battered and Bruised’ is heat-of-the-act chaos with cranked sirens and muffled screams, while closer ‘Waste of Time and Space’ is slower and shame drenched, with lyrics like ‘Self destruction / Never felt so right’. Fractious and indulgent bum tripping downer dance.