Listening to the debut full-length by London threesome Male Bonding is like trying to have a conversation with someone who’s running a marathon–they’re huffing along at warp speed and you’re all, “Wait! Wait!”
The 13 songs featured on Nothing Hurts are fast in every way (note the Nirvana-esque bass and guitar on “Weird Feelings”), and the whole thing is over in a little more than half an hour. Each two-minute song is a hyper throwback to 90s punk, if the era knew what punk knows now, with a salty splash or two of surf rock leaking through the open-aired vocals and guitar provided by Kevin Hendrick and John Arthur Webb. A prime example of this is Franklin, which heavily hints that someone in this band is a huge Beach Boys fan. All this won’t last forever, is repeated in the chorus, and that ain’t no joke. It took me three listens to fully get the flavor of the album, but once I did, I could say for certain that it tastes good.
