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< Ten Kens
Ten Kens
words by Danny Canter
There’s not ten of them, and no one’s called Ken. A bit Barenaked Ladies, isn’t it? Maybe not. Although Dean Tzenos (guitars), Dan Workman (vocals), Lee Stringle (bass) and Ryan Roantree (drums) are also from Toronto, Canada, like most of the bands worth listening to these days. But Ten Kens don’t make radio pop about Chinese chicken and silliness. They make often-shrouded alt. rock that theatrically creeps (‘Refined’), more than edges towards Arcade Fire (the country road-running ‘Downcome Home’) and spirals into scratchy unpredictability like heroes Liars (‘Spanish Fly’). It’s all pretty tiring stuff – the doomed surf pop of ‘The Alternative Biker’ on the heals of your led-heavy legs, frantically hot-footing it down a lane that never ends, symbolising just how haunting and nightmarish this quartet can be. Of course you can’t out-run a sound as big as this, but why would you want to?
‘Your Kids Will Know’ (available to download for free below) is a swaying Ring Around The Rosie, rocking us to sleep before blasting our ears to wake us the moment we’ve nodded off, ‘Bearfight’ is a raging My Bloody Valentine, if they’d only embrace a soaring choir, while ‘Y’all Come Back Now’ is the seducer here, slivering into our bedroom at night.
More than once ‘Ten Kens’ may well have you slapping yourself to wakeup from a trance that can come on due to its sometimes derivative nature, but if you stick at it you’ll soon realise that to envelope yourself in its schizophrenic shadiness is to grab the rewards there for the taking.
7/10 in stores now
TO DOWNLOAD 'YOUR KIDS WILL KNOW FOR FREE, CLICK HERE
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