This came out in 2003 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Despite their rather exotic handle, Tangiers are actually the hottest new indie-punk It Band from Toronto. Not that you’d be able to tell their home base from spinning their amphetamine-laced debut nod Hot New Spirits.
More likely, you’d hear their spiky, angular guitars and caffeinated drum beats and presume they’re a bunch of London art-school dropouts who’ve spent much quality time with their Wire and Gang of Four albums. Alternatively, you could glom on to their yelped vocals, crunching power chords and punky insouciance and take them for a gang of Noo Yawk punkoids worshipping at Richard Hell’s altar in the scuzz-encrusted bathroom at CBGB. Hell, you could even hear that honking harmonica and those tom-tom tattoos and figure you’ve got the latest hive of retro-rocking Scandinavian Stones sycophants on your hands. Of course, by the time you made it through this half-hour-disc — past the jittery insistence of Red Stone Rocks, the basement-punk nihilism of Shoestrings, the aptly titled Anxiety and the stuttering retro-twitch of Situation — you couldn’t help but realize that they’re the best of all those worlds combined. And a band that live up to their album title, if not their name.
