Graham Reid | | <1 min read
Alt-J: Warm Foothills
Much as I liked the debut album by this British outfit An Awesome Wave and said they seemed likely to be the Next Indie.Cult Thing to go bigger, I certainly had reservations about seeing them live.
Their music was so studio-crafted and often inward looking that I couldn't see how it would translate live. Well, I saw them and although I concede others liked them much better than I did , but I felt my reservations were right.
They are clever, and this album is more such refined cleverness . . . but it rarely has any traction or adhesiveness. It is one of those "Hmm that's nice" (the delicate Arrival in Nara/Nara) but "That's annoyingly oddball" (the silly aren't-we-quirky punkabilly stomp of Left hand Free) albums of separate parts.
Let's not go there on the lyrics either: "I'm gonna bed into you like a cat beds into a beanbag, turn you inside out and lick you like a crisp packet". That's from Every Other Freckle which borrows it's "Hey!" punctuations from the Lumineers.
The Gospel of John Hurt ("chest bursts like John Hurt") is a strange but beguiling piece.
There's a flute interpolation apropos of not much at all, Warm Foothills has a choral opening and a nicely weaving vocal line (and whistling) and the final 16 minute piece Leaving Nara makes me think this Mercury Prize-winning outfit is now The Band Most LIkely to Go Prog-folk.
Very patchy indeed.
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