Album Review: Microshift by Hookworms

Hookworms embody this attitude. Although signed to Domino records, their ethos is DIY; they’re self-managed, self-produced (frontman MJ is a producer of note), and record in MJ's Suburban Home Studios in Kirkstall, a workspace which had to be rebuilt pretty much from scratch after being gutted when the River Aire broke its banks back in 2015. Initially incorrectly lumped in with the 'new psych' scene, this third album (following 2014s The Hum and Pearl Mystic a year prior) seesHookworms moving away away from the cosmic punk of their past, although barely concealed rage remains evident. More than anything else however, groove-based propulsion informs proceedings this time.

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Beneath the breakneck noise nihilism, a quest for catharsis has always been the positivist driving force behind Leeds’ psych-garage tearaways. Accordingly, the sonic shift hinted at by their third album’s title isn’t so much a radical overhaul as a re-energising of their affirmative impetus. Where previous albums called to mind masked art-punks Clinic with space-rock thrusters on, Microshift marshals loops, synths and samples in thrilling blasts of dynamic electro-rock, issued as emotionally gripping responses to the real-life trials that inspired it.

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