She Wants Revenge know what’s going on around them all too well. They know, like I do, that “retro 80’s” has been the unwitting trend among new music these days. There are a number of people I talk to who are confused as to how or why. Nostalgia for the 1980’s by the AIM generation is driven by the notion that the 1980’s represents some more simple time and, in some ways, it does. However, one overlooked parallel that 2005 shares with the early-mid 1980’s is a new wave of unabashed conservatism and the subsequent backlash against that conservatism within popular culture.

In 2005, there have been an overwhelming number of bands performing the style, everything from post-punk to industrial goth, but few have both the substance and the songwriting to keep it fresh. On the self-titled She Wants Revenge full-length, the band has crafted a series of electronically driven, bouncy, instantly listenable cross-molded songs that make up for all the bad imitators out there. Fresh off a U.S. tour where they were featured opening for Mercury Prize short listers Bloc Party, the inescapable comparisons to Sisters of Mercy, Depeche Mode, The Cure, and New Order will continuously swirl around their eerily black-clad personas. SWR are dedidcated to bringing danceworthy sadness back into iPods and CD Players everywhere, and they do so with a nearly untouchable perfection.

If you hated any or all of the bands I mentioned above, there’s no point in downloading or commenting on this track, “These Things”. Listening to Justin sing “This is the time of your life but you just can’t tell”, I feel the stir of echoes of 1985’s black future swimming all around me, never cheapening the sentiment or making it seem passe. Their self-titled CD should not be thrown in the heap with “all other 80’s sounding reject bands”. She Wants Revenge has crafted what could well be the perfect soundtrack for the new sadness.

More Revenge: She Wants Revenge - Broken Promises For Broken Hearts

Click Here to purchase the single “Out Of Control/Sister” from iTunes for only 99 cents

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