Bivouac — UK Nostalgia for the US Underground
If I were to describe Bivouac in a sentence, it would make them sound much more boring than they deserve: A trio of Brits were really into the American underground rock of the mid-to-late 80s, and started a band in 1992 dedicated to synthesizing their favorite stuff. I’ll say, like a good salesman should, that the band’s excellence is made in the execution: Energetic, tight playing in tandem with good songwriting. However, let’s just have a taste off of their first album, Tuber. If tense-but-emotionally-sincere-noisey-rock-that-isn’t-quite-noise-rock is your thing, give this a listen:
Going off of the couple of interviews available, the band was *really* into Husker Du, and if their moniker isn’t a coincidence, Jawbreaker too. Even just from reading their words, you can sense that these are guys who just absolutely loved the music they were into, and wanted to contribute something to it.
Their second album Full Size Boy is more polished, maybe a bit too polished. It’s still good, full of solid songs. I noticed though, that if you put this one on in the background, it doesn’t sound too interesting. I almost skipped writing about this group when I first put this one on (before Tuber), thinking that the tracks sounded too samey, too generic 90s. If you put this on via a pair of headphones though, it’s a much more robust listen, and you’ll better perceive the hardcore kick that Bivouac manages to keep flowing through their melodies. The band plays tighter than on the first album, with a bit of the noisy creativity on Tuber tampered down in exchange for more sprawling, dramatic songwriting:
You’ll see this band described as grunge or emo, if you look them up.I don’t think one can rightly say that this was a case of a group of British guys chasing after American grunge, à la Bush (seriously- aside from stealing Nirvana’s sound, Bush also stole their penchant for naming things after chemicals!) Again- I think their reference points were more proto-emo than anything else, which alone makes for an interesting specimen of what was going on in music at the time. Anyways, if you’re still not convinced by Bivouac, give them one final shot with this banger:
FFO: Jawbreaker, Husker Du, Unwound, Dinosaur Jr, Mission of Burma
Tags: proto-emo, emo, united kingdom, 80s nostalgia, post-hardcore
