The Wire, Issue 252, February 2005
Thread Pulls, Summer Songs
Ninepoint Records (9.1) CD
The slow angular spiked guitar trudge of Dublin young pups and three piece Thread Pulls is built from feedback, dissonant chops and reedy vocals that put one in mind of Thurston Moore traversing a tar pit, laborious foot lift by laborious foot lift, guitar dripping black oily tendrils and bitumen clots, like a heathen god risen from a forbidden land: a Subsonic Youth in every sense. This debut mini album collects five tracks and is an admirable declaration of intent. Opener “Summer” builds over a riff churning like an idling diesel engine, high guitar chimes ushering in the buzzing tectonic bass and drum part led by pinpoint cymbals, before the vocal arrives. This modus operandi works to particularly fine effect on the somnambulant sludge riffed “Nearly There” and the disenchanted stop-start squalls of final instrumental track “Building”. Nick Southgate