The Scaners
Scaners II
Dirty Water Records
March 29, 2019

Intergalactic French space punks, The Scaners, second full-length LP, Scaners II, has the same catchy lo-fi space-age garage punk sound as the band’s first release. The songs are somewhat cleaner and it seems like they’ve put more thought into how their heavy use of synth can add different feelings to their songs.

My go to description for this band is always “they’re kinda like The Spits and Mean Jeans had a baby, in space,” and it’s still pretty apt here on the second album. Calling it Scaners II makes sense; it could easily be a direct continuation from their self-titled debut, plus it carries on that whole Spits comparison I was making.

A lot of The Scaners songs are generally easy to remember and sing along with, like ‘Catch Up With a UFO’ and ‘Don’t Run, We’re Your Friend.’

Scaners songs generally have a very futuristic feel, from their heavy synth use, but on tracks like ‘Random City’ it has an almost hypnotic effect.

Songs like ‘Space X-ploration’ and ‘Galactic Race’ are basically what you imagine party tunes would be for space-age explorers.

They slow down the tempo in some songs and rely more on new wave influences in songs like ‘X-Ray Glasses.’

My favourite tracks are ones like ‘Pesticide Kids,’ where they maintain a quicker pace throughout the track, with the synth taking more of a backstage role than it does in other songs. It’s got a somewhat nihilistic vibe to it.

The album closes on ‘Run DD Run,’ which starts and ends with the typical synth droning, but picks up a much more frantic pace for the bulk of the song, promoting a feeling of urgency, which is probably what you want from a song telling you to run, right?

This isn’t anything groundbreaking, but there isn’t a single song here that I don’t like, so that’s really something in itself. The Scaners music has a really fun atmosphere to it, so be sure to catch them when they play with Dead Meat at the Finsbury on May 5.

-Linsey McFadden