Water Machine - God Park

Flooding out of Glasgow in 2022, Water Machine quickly gained a reputation for their weird and wonky art-punk, winning hearts with sing-along songs about dogs, struggling artists and the housing crisis. 

The world of Water Machine is a swirling eddy of melodic bass lines and volatile guitar sliding between jazz chords and punk riffs, all the while narrated by sardonic social commentary and silly stories. God Park takes disparate influences and distils the disjointed into something new. Taking influence from everywhere - from LiLiPUT to The Pastels - the tunes are always on the verge of falling apart or breaking down. Whether it’s the bubblegum pop of lead single Tiffany or the country-punk bait and switch that is Hando, their frantic genre-hopping is always underpinned with anarchic joy.

In places, Water Machine’s songs do indeed echo hometown touchstones such as The Vaselines and the arty, pre-Ecstasy, Soup Dragons, plus the bands on Postcard Records. Similar to their predecessors there are affectionate nods to pop’s past. Handclaps and harmonies hark back to the ’60s. Organs grind like garage nuggets. Motown gets mutated through Rickenbacker jangle. There are Tropicalia-like touches, and bass-lines pay homage to Peter Hook.