airfix kits

AIRFIX KITS:
“Playing Both Sides” b/w “Leaving” and Flex Time: 7” EP
Ten years ago, I sneered at the idea of “singer songwriters,” casting them off into the Yacht Rock camp of Loggins and Messina or post-Wings McCartney. But, as in this often cicada-short lifespan of many punk bands, it’s a worthy enterprise tracing particular folks through their various bands, discovering which of their fingerprints were on the steering wheel of a particular musical conveyance. Airfix Kits emerge from the Giant Haystacks cocoon, vocally led by Allan, a British ex-patriot. The Airfix Kits shed many of the Haystacks’ Minutemen-isms. Charming noodling is replaced by tighter, bouncier songs. And the reason I’m intentionally covering two 7”s in the same review is that they have a nice “snapshots of a time” feel to them. The 7”s work great by themselves, but played one after another, it’s like several short stories—think of author Alan Sillitoe, if that helps—telling a larger one: of a man emotionally betrayed, a man trapped by his lack of ambition, a man who’s surrounded by friends making bad decisions. It’s reminiscent, in the best ways, of early Who, early Jam, and Gang Of Four: specific, but universal narratives played like actual lives are at stake… with a beat you can snap your fingers to. –Todd Taylor (Dirtnap, Deranged)

http://www.razorcake.org/site/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=22247

Airfix Kits live in Oakland but sound like a British band. This is partly because their singer, Allan McNaughton, is a Glaswegian ex-pat; but also because their songs are winningly jagged and calcified, the sound of the slow bleed from Wire and Gang Of Four circa their first LPs to the mid-80s Britshambles that John Robb just did a book about (Big Flame, Bogshed etc). The cover art to ‘Playing Both Sides’, their new seven on Dirtnap, is a photo of two youngsters leaning over their cans of Oranjeboom to get off with each other in a takeaway. ANY 11” PIZZA ONLY £2.90 tells you the location, and perhaps that of McNaughton’s head. His previous band, Giant Haystacks, sounded pretty similar to this minus the Oi-ish vocal backups; they were superb and if they had had even the slightest interest in ‘getting big’, it probably would have happened. Likewise Airfix Kits; I mean, post-punk is like totally over and McNaughton is probably sick of imbeciles in bars telling him his accent is really hot and just like the guy from Franz Ferdinand, but… he writes killer pop songs.

http://thequietus.com/articles/03730-new-column-the-best-in-punk-hardcore-review