Nothing Hurts

VINYL FORMAT. Emerging from the fertile D.I.Y. rock scene in Dalston, a gentrification-proof London neighborhood with ample "lo-fi" bands and Turkish restaurants, noise-pop trio Male Bonding plays fast. Nothing Hurts, the band's first full-length, gets it done in half an hour, and most songs clock in at around two minutes. But, there's much more to Male Bonding than high-speed, high-impact punk. If you will know their velocity, you will remember their melodies. Every song on Nothing Hurts, whether a clipped, snarling rock anthem ("All Things This Way," "Crooked Scene," "Pumpkin") or something more foggy and contemplative ("Franklin," "Worse to Come"), carries a hook that's immediate and permanent. Nothing Hurts was recorded in the fall of 2009 in New York and mixed and mastered by Pete Lyman at Infrasonic Sound.