Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be, now we have the ability to gloss over the sepia and rose coloured times in which the past would have us believe was all that happened, that there was no bleak or feelings of disharmony or abandonment within society; that it was all a bad dream which we can forget and move on till the next time society and Time decide to take us apart.

To think of the past as some type of devil to keep away from, to not embrace with feeling is to shun experiences that have made you the way you are and whilst it is healthy to feel bitter, to feel cynicism and rage, you have to also feel the positive that came out of such times. It is a feeling that should be squeezed with firm directness; such in the way the Staggs have managed to do with their genre splitting and nods to Techno in their two songs Robotomy and Don’t Call Me Satan.

Whilst complimenting each other with their charming sampling techniques and sneering, postulating distrust towards a British culture that in many ways has changed beyond belief since the days of the late 1970s and 80 and yet still can be considered to have hardly moved on at all. A society that has rightly embraced equality in many quarters and yet will step over a homeless person to get to a cash machine or get into buy a cheap bottle of wine, a culture that has moved away from looking down its nose and getting laughs out of the colour of a person’s skin but will happily abuse disabled people with taunts and the mentally ill with stigmatism.

Whilst there is the sampling going on which gives the two songs a moment of the unexpected pleasure, of the riff that carries the tracks along and makes the sneer something beautiful, in much the same way that the much loved Johnny Rotten could make the stare down the camera say a million words, so too do The Staggs make the fin de siècle seem inevitable and much looked forward to.

Robotomy and Don’t Call Me Satan capture the imagination, they allow cynicism to be healthy and cool and it is a value that must be embraced, must be kept from harm; don’t think the Staggs have the devil in them, they just don’t side with the sepia tinged angels.

Ian D. Hall