"VARIATIONS ON SWING"
KERRANG
Sparking debut from hotly tipped brit rockers, Like enthrawling post-hardcore? meet your new favourite band.
KKKK's
ROCKSOUND
Spiky, technical and aggressive, MMISL weild time signature's as if practicing capoeira with lightsabers to form a choppy blend of hardcore that cannot fail to invigorate
8/10
DROWNED IN SOUND
Once you succumb to the ride and just let go, it will carry you through. And on the way you can enjoy the fantastic talent on display - tangled riffs and spliced rhythms that you only wish you could dream up, let alone play. This is a challenging, unsettling, superb debut
8/10
THE FLY
Everything about "variations on swing" is full on, from the impossibly fast drumming, just about keeping up with the Attention Deficit disorder key signature's.
They make at-the-drive-in sound more like busted circa 2000
4/5
CONTACT MUSIC
Meet Me In St. Louis are a pure revelation. Angular, stark and technically beautiful, they peddle a gorgeous hybrid of eclectic noise. It shares similarities with Faraquet, HP Zinker and perhaps on a more contemporary tip, At The Drive In. It's altogether a more mature and considered approach to the whole affair though, blending cutting, jagged riffs with a carefully considered sensitivity.
it is undoubtedly an extremely strong contender for best album of 2007.
4/5
THE MUSIC MAGAZINE
44 minutes of exhilarating post-hardcore and a sound all their own. Mixing the fast a furious with the delicate and eloquent the five-some disperse all pretenders with a flourish. The talent and skill that goes into music like this, utilising constantly changing time signatures, surprising song structures, intelligent lyrics and wild guitars is to be admired and respected
4/5
NEW NOISE
they don’t even sound like they care what anyone else thinks. In fact from start to finish ‘Variations On Swing’ actually fights to defy expectation, approval and routine. Off-time pulses, electronic noise and awkward riffs flood forward from songs so taut they could snap.jumbled noises and vocal hooks that will swim from your speakers to your brain like a shark looking for a meal and then, maybe immediately or maybe only after really, truly listening, the jaws will clamp down and great, dark sections of songs will be stuck in your synapses and neurons for days.
SUBBA-CULTCHA
Unassailable albums: become concerned about the safety of your lofty positions - Meet Me In St Louis have provided a debut of perfect post-hardcore abuse that can neither be fathomed nor faulted.Truly a multi-faceted war machine and a delight to behold.
5/5
STUDENT DIRECT
Seriously, what do these guys have for breakfast? Whatever it is, they need to share, so other people can make an album as good as this. One of the best of 2007.
9/10
SPUTNIK-MUSIC
“Variations on Swing” fits in this year by single handedly one upping Hot Cross’s “Risk Revival” in terms of the best post-hardcore release.
This is a band to watch and a debut LP that is easily one of the best albums of 2007.
4/5
DIE SHELLSUIT DIE
Occasionally it is a pleasure to review an album. At this point step forward Meet Me In St. Louis, I salute you for being just utterly and spellbindingly brilliant.
in terms of inventive rock music, few can come close to capturing what MMISL have created here. In fact the scariest thing is that if it sounds this good and ferocious on CD, what is it going to be like live? I have to feel a little sorry for the bands kind enough to take MMISL out on tour with them. Prepared to be upstaged.
9/10
ROCK MIDGETS
They've crafted a quite brilliant debut that proudly stands head and shoulders above the vast majority of their British peers. Quite where they go from here is anybody's guess.
4/5
HERTFORDSHIRE MERCURY
Meet Me In St Louis blend acute pop-punk sensibilities with ear-shredding hardcore to createwell, a bloody great racket. Not for the faint-hearted, their explosive debut hits you like bottled adrenochrome - all schizophrenic thrash mayhem that shifts tempo and pattern sporadically yet never stumbles into insufferable atonality.
THE MUSIC ZINE
All in all Variations On Swing is a brilliant album in a genre full of misses this is what post-punk should sound like. Connected yet angular staccato guitar over driving bass-lines. Good stuff!
5/5
THE BLUE LIGHT DISTRICT
As cynical as I’ve become, bands like Meet Me In St. Louis prove that there’s still some hope left in contemporary music. Aggressive, uplifting and damn near poetic, St. Louis are a thing of beauty.
B I O G R A P H Y
According to a popular film and television website, “Meet Me In St. Louis is delightful, classic, nostalgic, poignant, and romanticized”. Some of these words may ring true for the band, but in the most part this is a very different beast. Completely incomparable and definitely something to behold.
Taking their name from the popular 1940’s Judy Garland film, the band formed in June 2005 setting up base in Guildford, each member delighted to finally have a chance to enjoy the novelty of writing with a team of equally talented musicians, all set on creating something slightly out of the norm. Blending schizophrenic time-changes, blast beats, huge guitar riffs and catchy vocal hooks sounds like a recipe for disaster but that wasn’t to be the case, with the band quickly rising to the forefront of the UK underground scene and causing jaws to hit the ground right the way across the country with their blistering live assault.
In front a crowd is where this band really come into their own. Having perfectly honed their style after playing every toilet venue up and down the UK, as well as a fortnight-long trip around Eastern Europe, it’s about more than the music. Limbs flailing and spilling into the crowd, it’s a live performance you and your painfully ringing ears won’t forget in a long time, and as good a reason as any to why so many people are tipping this band for greatness. The band will be continuously touring throughout September and October with the likes of Hell Is For Heroes and An Emergency amongst others.
Their debut EP, the tongue-twisting ‘And with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark – the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back’ (released via local label Function Records in summer 2006) was as well received as it was overly titled. Plaudits in hand Meet Me In St. Louis set about writing their first full-length record. A chance email was sent and new fan and friend-to-be, Alex Newport (the genius behind records from At The Drive-In, The Locust, The Mars Volta, Sepultura and many, many more), flew over to produced the release in January 2007 at the renowned Miloko Studios in London. A tiring two weeks (diarised on the Drowned In Sound website) filled with highs and lows, sound tweaking and illness followed, with the band eventually coming away with what will soon be regarded as one of the debut albums of the year. A truly astonishing record from a band on the verge of following their namesake into genre-defining history.
