jakethesnake wrote:so it was really when I heard the earlier stuff that his voice sounded too Ian Curtis to me for the music though the debut album actually sounds VERY UK post-punk at times completel with subtly "funky" undertones similar to Gang of four & co on many tracks so on that one, it makes more sense to me.

Cool. We tuned in around the same time. I guess I first heard them between We Shoot for the Moon and the Drive It Home EP.

The first album is quite good ("Orange Crush"!) but I totally get where you're coming from. The band didn't hit its stride till the keyboards took a back seat and the two-guitar thing came to the fore. Oddly enough, I think the debut is as adjacent to herky-jerky American stuff like early Talking Heads as it is to Joy Division. (Funny thing is that I don't like Talking Heads much at all and can barely listen to Joy Division nowadays b/c it's so dour and overplayed, whereas Slovenly still totally scratches an itch. Go figure.)