Popular music “makes” emotion. You can argue it is an instrument of enlightenment as well as entertainment. The artform has certainly driven some mad over time, like Horkheimer and Adorno, who used the metaphor of the ultimate boho trickster, Odysseus, lashed to the mast of his own ship, to inch their way towards an understanding of mass (musical) culture. Despite their best efforts – and to misquote David Byrne – they’d only gotten half way there. Pop music gave a sigh and replied, quoting Arthur Seaton. “Whatever people say I am, that’s what I’m not.”
Great pop music also often sounds like lots of other pop music, and just itself: all at once. This is certainly true of The First Exit, the debut album from young Rotterdam rock band Tramhaus. The album can remind one at times of other wonderful instances of manufactured noise, from the likes of Pixies, Joy Division, Fat White Family and Nirvana. Not that Tramhaus are like any of these acts. The Rotterdammers have forged their own collective creative identity, born of long hours on tour and in the studio, and working and being together, as a tight-knit set of friends.
The First Exit is certainly a reflection of the band’s collective attitude and attendant work ethic that has seen the release of six singles in eighteen months. But it is also a break with the past through a form of fusion with the present: the mission to capture their titanic live sound in a studio setting. With today’s released single and video for “Ffleur Hari”, Tramhaus is doing just that. Bringing their titanic live sound to the song and the video, recorded at Best Kept Secret festival at their stellar show.
‘The stomping ‘Ffleur Hari’ boasts one of the band’s trademark one liners that demands you know more: “He always has been a dreamer” sets up another emergency, this time a relentless stomp that creates the ground for a set of cavernous guitar lines that now and again echo Will Sergeant at his most ironclad. Simple, but very effective Stuff. It’s worth noting that the beat on The First Exit is very fluid and inventive throughout, essentially reactive with no real formulaic tempo or pattern. Jim Luiten’s stick work, and the complimenting bass lines from Julia Vroegh give the songs a real sense of urgency and interest.’ – Richard Foster
Like a number of classic records, The First Exit clocks in at just over the half hour mark. But so what? This debut is a quest document, filled with stories that bewitch, unsettle, and excite. The listener will need a while to unpack such a rich and exciting record and bask in its fiery afterglow. Repeated listening is recommended.
