I relish the opportunity to expose our readership to new independent music on a regular basis. For this writer, it is the ultimate high to help lift from obscurity a worthy band that lacks the marketing muscle of a major label machine, and, like a crusty hygiene-deficient junkie, I am instinctively trying to score the next great fix, regularly on the lookout for such opportunities. That dutiful yet addictive sentimentality is precisely how I got conned into trying this band, lured by the unfulfilled promise of moderately morose music akin to those early Factory Records artists that LTM Recordings has such a veiny hard-on for.
As a scruffy, shifty-eyed frequenter of many a record store I am almost ashamed to admit that I have fallen for this bait-and-switch on more than a few occasions. Time and time again I succumbed to tantalizing assurances, to off-the-cuff favorable comparisons of some unknown band to one that I genuinely adore. Released on a minor label incidentally run by the album’s two producers, Surprise Attacks indeed takes its inspirational cues from Joy Division and Section 25, as well as their modern progeny. Ribbons’ key deficiency, however, is an inability to move beyond those weighty influences in any meaningful way, rendering the girl-boy duo unsuited to compete with the bountiful harvest of postpunk revivalists stomping and pouting in rock clubs worldwide.
Construing some half-hearted amalgam of The Dresden Dolls’ Amanda Palmer’s lower register, Justin Warfield’s (She Wants Revenge) forced inflection, and Ian Curtis’ apathetic detachment, multi-instrumentalist Jenny Logan displays such a paralytic aversion to vocal range that, stripped of intent, it practically counts as parody. From song to song, she mutters indistinctly, too cryptic and cool to carry a tune. Drummer Sam Roudman, while competent enough for such milquetoast fare, offers little in the way of competition for Brian Viglione or Stephen Morris. Marred by a stark dearth of inventiveness, Surprise Attacks rotates through a routine of lazy plodding and clumsy floundering for its half-hour duration, its self-destructive sameness blending each drearily dull track into the next. “More,” the closest thing to a highlight here, boasts a catchy angular intro but quickly abandons that premise for a much blander verse, returning to the original refrain far too late to rescue the track. Beyond this, there is little to enjoy. In particular, I can’t help but cringe at awkward out-of-place handclaps that attempt to add spice to “Bastille Day.”
“No Clouds” poorly apes Radiohead’s “My Iron Lung” on the verse, though that mimicry is hardly Ribbons' most egregious act of pilfering. “About Them” disgracefully rips off the untouchable New Order classic “Ceremony” so obviously that the insincere Southern twang injected between the flagrantly stolen bits is cold comfort. This shameful offense alone should disqualify Ribbons from further serious consideration by anyone. Surprise Attacks ought to be retitled Sucker Punches because that’s exactly what it amounts to: cheap shots. I’ve been cheated, bamboozled even. I mean, I actually paid for this insufferable hunk of mediocrity and regurgitation. I’d sooner dump it in the gutter than listen to it ever again, as that would finally afford this malevolent hipster-baiting trash some much-needed class.
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