Neckties Make Me Nervous
s/t 7"
gcv012
Released August 2006
See below for Track listing and Press Reviews

It’s great when a band has their shit together. Neckties are one of those bands. Channeling old school hardcore and straight-up political punk rock on their debut 7” these guys prove to be the real deal through and through. For such a young band, I am amazed at how singular their sound is. Fast, loud, pissed off, these guys remind us that there is still a fight to be fought.
(Peter Terebesi) Verbicide Magazine Issue 19, Spring 2007

Here's the shit, well qualified for "best record from a band I've never heard of and know nothing about." All I can tell you is that these kids appear to be straight shooting stirrers from Portland Punk City, USA. They sound confused as they play songs that sit somewhere between 90s melodic chaos (try UOA for a reference, but JACK ACID works just as well), modern catchy lo fi shits (OBSERVERS, PEDESTRIANS) and street punk (I'll be damned if "The Fourteen Home" doesn't sound like fellow PDXers THE RIFFS). Lyrically these guys spit fucking fire with desperate frustration, irony and rage. The first song should become the anthem for any future black clad backlash featuring the lyrics "and the punks put the pictures on the record sleeves." The other three tracks similarly ooze with isolation and honesty. Certainly this is far from the tightest or best produced record, but I'm pretty sure that was not the mission. Pure punk in intent and delivery, and there's not much more I could ask for. A great release, and they are nice enough to throw in a CD with the same tracks for easy listening on the go. So now I can jam "Eat The Knife" on my way to work tonight...Sweet.
(Robert) Slug & Lettuce #89 Autumn 2006

This is a fucking impressive debut 7” and I am gritting my teeth for a full-length!! Raw and crazy energetic hardcore punk rock. Urgent and chaotic as fuck. The attack is overpowering and magnificent. This is confrontational and intelligent. How can you fuck with that? Fantastic vocals that remind me slightly of Jesse Luscious at times, in fact, there is a slight CRIMINALS element to NECKTIES MAKE ME NERVOUS which is cool with me! There’s nothing else to say. Just get this and get blown away. I hope these guys are working on a full-length!!!!! Oh yeah, no need to shy away for this absolutely necessary 7” just because you don’t got a record player because this 7” comes with a CD-R version too so there’s no excuse!
No Front Teeth Webzine

One day, years ago, when I working a coffee job, a guy dressed very similarly to me—T-shirt, jeans, sneakers—came in and looked really jumpy. I didn’t ask. He just started talking as I handed him his cup. “I was at the Golden Donut Palace up the street. Two dudes in clown masks came in and held the place up with shotguns. They only took stuff from the men in ties and the rich-looking women. Left all the manual laborers alone.” That’s always stuck with me. If I ever lead a life of crime, neckties will somehow be used as a barometer. Neckties Make Me Nervous follow suit: it feels like they’re holding up rich “picked first in kickball” punk rockers at gunpoint with their stripped-down, gritty DIY punk that’s swollen with smarts and well-placed pride in being a societal fuck up, way past the time in life where it’s fashionable. Fans of Crimpshrine and Cleveland Bound Death Sentence take note. (Features a member of Pelvis Wesley, too.) Very satisfying.
(Todd) RAZORCAKE, Issue #34, October/November 2006

The punchline to the title track is "…and the punks put the pictures on the record sleeves." It’s a brilliantly realized attack on the appropriation of (mostly third world) violence and suffering by punks who pair up the stolen graphics with a half-assed "fuck war" song. NECKTIES MAKE ME NERVOUS plays fast, snotty, pissed-off punk rock with smart lyrics that lean towards healthy criticism of problems within the punk scene. Sound-wise they are fairly one-dimensional – it feels like the singer is just over your shoulder screaming in your ear the whole time the record is playing, Still, this is a good record all around. It comes with lots of goodies like stickers and posters, and apparently even a CD for the turntable-deprived.
(AM) MRR, Issue #282, November 2006

I love punk, me, and Neckties Make Me Nervous remind me why. OK, OK, not all punk. That would be daft. It would mean having intense devotional feelings for - I dunno - Peter and the Test Tube Babies. And although their Moped Lads ("if you hit 'em they tell their dads") was, erm, genius, punk has been dead for about twenty five billion times longer than it was ever alive.
Some say it died the day Sid plunged his gleaming SS Obersturmbanfuher's dagger into Nancy's cold, corrupt heart and then gouged her kohl'd eyes out and cast them aside like a couple of unpotted pool balls. Others date punk's demise to the time Plastic Bertrand's audaciously shite Ca Plane Pour Moi video was aired on Swap Shop (YouTube it if you really must.) Still others maintain its fate was sealed the moment Jim Callaghan pogoed through customs yelling "Crisis? what fucking crisis?!?," whilst Glasgow's streets became buried beneath bin-liners full of amputated limbs and typhus-carrying rats chewed punters' faces off at an under-attended Rezillo's gig.
But draw a line beneath these debates, I beg of you! The point is that, as NMMN prove, punk loves to play the revenant, the persistent zombie that comes a knock-knock-knockin' on your sweet leopard-skin bum-flap, gobbing big greenies everywhere and kicking the downstairs bog to bits. Its bloated corpse likes nothing more than to cavort maliciously around your living-room like a gangrenous gazelle, dripping stinking green matter all over your beech-effect laminate flooring.
So what's the secret then? How is this 7" from darkest Oregon waking the dead? WHAT MANNER OF HIDEOUS VOO-DOO IS AT WORK HERE?? Sod all, actually. That's the point - there's no tricks, no smoke and mirrors, no Debbie McGee flourishes. Consequently, in an era when the norm is 24 digital tracks of virtual gospel choirs, banjos and muttering about sound-cards, scart-to-phono leads and god knows what else, NMMN are having an ace laugh making a right din. They are, basically, getting out a bit more, and doing their best to revive the dead art of living.
Nor do they shirk from the task of prodding a few well-chosen targets with a pointy stick or two. Track one - the magnificantly sardonic Apparently the Khmer Rouge are Killing Quite a Lot of People in Portland - takes a critical stab at punk bands' use of images of war and violent oppression on their record sleeves. NMMN's beef is that such artwork is all too often used solely for shock value, rather than to reinforce lyrical content and associated ideological positions: "the photos by your songs, it's all coloured vinyl and the Viet Cong." This gestural, superficial, bollocks may ultimately result in desensitising the consumers' gaze, not radicalising it (it's good to see echoes of a Debord-like critique here). Elsewhere we get such gems as "An ironic t-shirt as armour, that's fucking brilliant." And "the precepts of the pecking order just never fucking die." So, not withstanding an apparently odd mix of metaphors ("The rug's always pulled out when the train hits the last stop"), this is great stuff - mordant and clever, with a few guffaws along the way.
On the sonic side of things, NMMN are speedy and aggressive. And while it's well lazy of me, their punk shtick brings to mind the DKs - what with the Jello-ish lambasting and violent guitars and drums, etc. Which leads me to a minor caveat of sorts. For my money it was the pre-Peligro Kennedys that took all the prizes. That's when DH's predecessor, Ted, tended to keep the band to an uptempo 4:4 - rather than the all-out war of the formers drumming on stuff like the In God We Trust 12". What I'm saying here is that this NMMN single leans towards that thrash and burn approach, refusing to engage with more musically coherent tactics (which was the stuff of the DKs' Fresh Fruit LP and those few, fantastic singles that preceded it).
But shit, this is no criticism of t'Necks - not really. So let there be no doubt it, I'm all in favour of this compellingly hectic racket making, this 'last one to the chorus is a dinkwad' mentality. Arses are kicked, idiots are heckled and fun is had. And to top it all, NMMN have put a brilliant bundle together - you get a free cd of the EP (in its own separate, killer packaging), some great stickers, and a poster thingy - all in a full colour, wrap-around cover, slathered in fantastic graphics.
(Rodney 'Stuka' Winsor) robots and electronic brains online zine