What Would Jesus Drive – Black and Blue

Fantastically intellectual debut that masquerades as a dunce

Published: Friday, January 14, 2011

The brattishness, the scenesterism, the markedly trite lyrics – it’s all a masterful branding exercise but WWJD isn’t selling what they promote, they’re castigating it.

The realisation comes: I’ve been played with, not in a good way, and I feel a trifle dirty.





WWJD is selling a brand – but its their own relationship with that brand which is most intriguing. The package they flog on the surface is the indulgence and decadence of a subculture steeped in piss and cider. But actually, they surreptitiously broadcast their own conflict with that package; their bravado a mere front for how unsustainable, worrysome and fragile existence is – quite at odds with the surface sentiment.

Only the album’s tender moments are a gloryhole puncture to this wall of façade; acknowledging that, in fact, the package they appear to be selling contradicts the fragility of life and soul and leaves one morally, financially and spiritually bankrupt.

Perhaps the shortest album I’ve ever heard, Black and Blue starts with Black and Blue which literally sets the scene with its panic-inducing sirens and static. At first we could be anywhere: nothing geographically tangible lets itself be known – until the accents sound.

Aggressive, menacing and eminently London. We’re in London. We’re about to spend an uncomfortable half an hour listening to an antagonistic journey through location and emotion in the capital as scene-subjects meet sex, booze, drugs, and the inevitable spiral.

As a package, this album should celebrate the appealing clusterfuck of debauchery but instead, and very subtly, the band mourns it.

WWJD Band 300x249 What Would Jesus Drive Black and Blue

The album ploughs through unrelenting piledriver tracks featuring crashing drums and a bass guitar that’s found an octave lower than anything on any piano. There’s a real earthy texture which grumbles along whilst choppy guitars and minimal effects take a back seat for the journey as a complementary singing duo (I believe they’re married) in Amy Casey and Tim Box exchange unpleasantries and what seem like deep-as-a-puddle social sentiments.

As an album it’s is like the film Fight Club: we can see flashes of Tyler Durden before he makes himself known. Similarly, the album is punctuated by moments of unrequited beauty; usually in the form of a vocal harmony or moment’s poetic respite. Shining rays of hope through a boarded up window in some squalid capital squat, we’re treated to pretty – but that’s not the point so on we go; straight back to the dirge. What they hint for a second is retracted for eternity and cue more relentlessly pulverising choppy choruses and anthemic culture aggrandisement.

I think this is where we came in: the album hits a half way point at track five and unravels. The notion that this forensically intellectual debut could be a fluke disappears. We are treated, and I use that word knowingly, to The Leccy.

The Leccy, the electricity. The electricity has stopped. The pumping, triumphalism has stopped and the subject comes crashing back down to earth to deal with the mundane: the electricity, the phone bill, the prospect of going outside, those antiquated notions of self betterment…

On a base level, The Leccy is a welcome interruption to the relentlessness of the record; the assault to the ears and the mind. But under the surface it’s a beautiful neo-poem, a vulnerable urban moment of clarity and a cry for help guarded, once again, by bravado.

This is the only true opportunity on the record to hear the singing – as opposed to the chanting – prowess of Amy Casey and within her devastatingly self-reflective verse comes the words “fuck it”. And so the party continues. It’s a beautiful trick.

WWJD Band Car 223x300 What Would Jesus Drive Black and Blue

Like so many of those timely wrist-flicks that add the intelligent subplot to this album, lyricism is functional in the main and crucially perceptive when it wants:P

“My head may be lost in the clouds but my mind’s in the sewer”

Translation: to those that can see, I look like I’m free, liberated and having a ball – when really never been more corrupt.

“Well fuck me it’s about time someone took offence to what I said”

Translation: I’m living in a scene where they’re all so desensitised I’m glad I found something to get a reaction.

It’s frighteningly insightful and unsettling.

The album deals with subject matter not unlike early Arctic Monkeys: booze, sex, drugs and social commentary on a local counter-culture. What sets it apart is the two pronged vocal attack of Box and Casey that offers relief from that tried and tired formula.

A low point of the album comes track nine: Love Is… which mashes features where the rest of the album is lacking. Starting with a trancey beat, it is lyrically esoteric and offers none of the relief we’re now craving as a result of our revelation at track five. It’s a bit of the album where you feel the backlash – it’s almost like the band has gone back to the party after their moment of clarity and how fucking dare they? They dare to ignore the bliss of the quiet and wish to return to the futility and strugglesome existence they so dismissed just five minutes ago?

No, go back home, save your money pal, pay The Leccy, get a cup of tea and sing us something pretty. We’ve had a taste of sobriety, don’t throw the towel in.

Sure enough, the album ends most fittingly: they tie up final anthem Fragile Mansions as if it were the last night out and its time to go home. It’s a pointedly confused song mixing the pretty with the pungent, the melodic with the morose. The night has come to an end, the party is over and the DJ is packing up.

There’s a choice now: go home and call it a night, accept that it finishes there and has no right to continue.

Or throw caution to the wind, go and get more fucked up and let the lure of the city streets and three days of oblivion drag you further down.

This is the inherent conflict that WWJD represents. The pseudo glamour of the streets at night, the dark and nasty corners, the extreme highs and the devastating lows – all that versus life. Simple life. Simply life on life’s terms.

They’re punting for life but you wouldn’t think it. A fantastically intellectual debut that pretends to be infuriatingly stupid. It’s a fine line to get right, and they’ve snorted it/ haven’t snorted it (delete as appropriate) perfectly.