Silence Yourself

Ultimately, Silence Yourself is eleven songs of balanced, well-constructed rock music.

Not content to simply cop post-punk aesthetics, these East London dread merchants are steeped in the sort dystopianism and apocalyptic anxiety that drove the likes of Killing Joke and The Banshees to such dizzying heights of foreboding.

Their obvious musical talent and distinctive voice make Silence Yourself an uncompromising and very enjoyable paean to individual agency.

Silence Yourself demands you shut up and listen. Compliance is advised. [Jun 2013, p.87]

Silence Yourself is more than just this year’s best debut record so far and even more than one of the best records of any kind this year. It could be the closest post-punk has come to full-bodied artistry since Interpol took their own post-punk influences and gave us Turn On The Bright Lights all those years ago.

he band has already built a mystique with their live show (frontwoman Jehnny Beth’s penetrating glare and righteous wail transfixed a packed Horseshoe Tavern at this year’s CMW), but Silence Yourself proves they’ve got the songs to back it up.

While frontwoman Jehnny Beth’s theatrics take up most of the listener’s attention, it’s the rhythmic duo of drummer Fay Milton and bassist Ayse Hassan that keeps the band on track

Since Savages have cultivated such a politicized aesthetic, it’s hard to divorce the concept behind the art from the art itself, but Silence Yourself delivers if you are willing to submit to its unflinching authority.

Savages’ smart reorganization and shuffling of punk, post-punk, krautrock, and noise music into something brutal, jarringly confrontational, and completely singular is a breath of fresh air and an unignorable statement of power and resistance.

Silence Yourself evokes very real sensory and emotional connections, leaving it up to you to get something out of it.

As with some modern art, you may find Silence Yourself leaves you whispering, “I appreciated it, but I didn’t love it.”

This juxtaposition of dissonance and beauty adds more friction to Silence Yourself’s atmosphere, transforming a potentially monochromatic record into something with intriguing depth.

The precedent is clear: Eighties post-punk, particularly the bony-riff geometry and dublike shadows of Killing Joke and early Siouxsie and the Banshees. So is the freshened, visceral impact.

The album doesn't quite match their punishing live show, but neither does it betray their purpose or message: to fiercely silence the white noise of psychosocial oppression. It is one missive they convey without ambiguity.

In some ways Silence Yourself doesn't provide the full Savages experience, but it offers more than enough to make it a powerful debut that suggests they'll become an even more distinctive force to be reckoned with over time.

Recorded live in the studio rather than piecemeal, Savages’ debut album Silence Yourself sees the band completely locked in with each other.

The album could’ve easily done without the first two [moodier pieces], and been even better for it. No matter. Silence Yourself is still a disquietingly brilliant debut.

The album cuts through a world of chatter and distraction because it practices what it preaches, transmitting its message directly through the primal, bone-rattling force of its songs.

With one foot in the here-and-now and the next already stepping into the future on Silence Yourself, Savages are not only making the statement that they are here, but that they are here to stay.

The album is stunningly crafted; their influences (Joy Division's mystic menace, Siouxsie Sioux's gothic howls) are proudly worn on blackened sleeves, but rather than dance around such matters, they dance with them.

Post-millennial indie boy-rock has taken a savage beating here. And it may prove the best it’s ever had.

Savages own a gravitas, a brooding confidence and effortless cool, that no matter how cynical or wary of pretentiousness you are, will be suck you in.

This is anarchic, itching punk at its most primal, most belligerent.

While they make no claims to be a wildly original band--they listen to Black Sabbath and they have been described as the all-female Joy Division--what makes them so compelling is their fierce focus.

Silence Yourself is the manifestation of a formidable spirit, a sense that everything they do is done with great purity of intent, and a brilliant sex, life and death album of a kind rarely seen these days.

A complete lack of compromise anywhere. Yet, whilst that means that it takes a few listens for the intricacies to fully come through (alongside stormy brooder ‘Strife’, early single ‘Husbands’ is still the most sonically independent offering here), it fundamentally endows the record with a clarity of vision that justifies all the hyperbole.

The debut from London quartet Savages burns with a feverish sense of purpose: the sheer intensity with which She Will or City's Full are delivered is breathtaking.

Amply weighted for a debut, Silence Yourself comprises a balance of really excellent stuff and the simply very good.

This four-woman English band has rekindled the post-punk of the late 1970s, with music that’s stark and overpowering.

There is a modern, angry masterpiece in here--just skip the manifesto.

Silence Yourself may not invent a genre. Silence Yourself may not give you something you didn’t have already. But it is so stark, so bold and delivered with such utter belief that you wonder why anyone would possibly care.