The debut single from France Has The Bomb came out this past month on Dusty Medical Records. The Minneapolis quartet play a brilliant concoction of pop-tinged rock that straddles the lines between a number of genres and refreshingly defies the one word categorizations often used to describe a certain sound. Looking at the bands lineage, it seems like there could be no other outcome. Featuring Danny Henry on drums, who has been behind the buckets in Awesome Snakes, The Soviettes, and the Dummies, keeps time with an articulate pummel. And with Hideo Takahashi, formally of Sweet J.A.P and currently in the Birthday Suits, both of which are known for their cold, jagged and catastrophic cadence, FHTB has some of that sound intertwined within their walls of their songs. But then there's Srini Radhakrishna, who has spent time just beyond the threshold of the spotlight in bands like Guilty Pleasures and The White Outs, both of which played with the sharp edge of more classical punk songs and often poked through to a layer of straight up rock'n'roll. When it came time to put the songs together, it seems what could have been a compositional nightmare came out as a perfectly executed amalgamation.
The A-side is song entitled "World of Mirrors," which opens with a stumbling and cleverly awkward drum beat under a reverberating guitar chord, and by the song's first chorus break, has built to a vertiginous speed. The vocals are hypnotically labored, oddly infectious, sometimes unintelligible, and as accented by backups that are borderline psychopathic. They somehow do it all through a pretty stand-up pop song. France Has The Bomb has an unique ability to weave dangerous shards of post-punk into a pop envelope and whip up a sound that oddly defies them both. Be sure to pick this up before everyone else does, and keep you eyes peeled for their upcoming single on HoZac Records.
