For many a purist, Estrons may come across as a bona-fide punk band. Lead singer Tali Källström wants to askew that label, though. Speaking to NME in February 2017, Källström stated that “It’s lazy journalism to call [them] a punk band”; watch out then, casuals.
While comparisons to other noiseniks (Yonaka, Sløtface) are easy to understand but hard to avoid, Estrons break the archetypal post-punk template used by their contemporaries, as they ricochet between incendiary choruses and effective pop structures.
The fiery quartet’s debut, You Say I’m Too Much, I Say You’re Not Enough, has arrived a year and a half on from Källström’s proposition. With a rabble-rousing rhetoric to boot, the band is clearly led under the fierce command of Källström. She doesn’t just own her sexuality, she oozes it with a motherlode of confidence, case in point being early single Make A Man. Soundtracked to a sugar-rush of racy alt-rock, she spits ‘I’d like to make a man of you’ over and over again with a primal desperation in her delivery, taking no prisoners as she flips female objectification on its head. It becomes increasingly apparent that repetition works in the case of Estrons; a similar approach is taken on Drop, creating another dizzying display of gruelling guitar lines that continuously battle against hammering drums, to a cacophonous effect.
Don’t panic, though – the quartet does allow the listener to have an occasional breather. A softer side creeps into view on Cameras, a cathartic outpour from a mother to her son that emotes greater than any of Estrons’ other offerings. Källström’s searing, scintillating vocals are utilised with greater conviction here, as an impassioned guitar underpins her declaration of love from the very start of the track, opening with the winning lyric ‘I will live a life for you. I’ll always win a fight for you. I’ll buy the day and night for you’. Cameras, albeit still relentless in its passion, acts as a respite due to the difference in pace; though the immediacy may falter, the accuracy still stays intact.
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Ultimately, You Say I’m Too Much (..) will truly bode well in a live setting; as a collective, it bristles with scrappy, spiky riffs that are sure to galvanise monster mosh pits that may run the risk of asphyxiation, cause shoes to scuff and send sweat up the walls. Estrons are out to start a real, discordant ruckus on the dance floor – it may be a good idea to stock up on that shoe polish, then.
Words by Sophie Williams
Twitter: @fluorescentsoph
