Graham Reid | | 1 min read
This acclaimed UK five-piece confound expectations at every turn on this twisting, shape-shifting debut album which has had some labelling it psychedelic (an inadequate and misleading description).
But if this were vinyl (and it is available on record, see below) if you dropped the needle at random you'd be referencing Gang of Four, Talking Heads, krautrock, J Mascis, Pere Ubu or primal therapy.
And just about all of these on the marathon Narrator.
There is also chipper pop-cum-Faust's groove (the two-part Boy Racer), Fall-like declamatory vocals, distortion, contemporary social comment (Documentary Filmmaker “goes home at the end of the day”) and political observation (Pamphlets with its Feelies-like guitar/drums intensity).
If you recall Avant-Garage and Big Sideways from Auckland's Eighties you might hear some of their quizzical styles in here also.
This may sound like a strange musical smorgasbord, but with judicious sampling and revisits to favourite flavours it starts to seem like more of a sumptuous feast of Seventies-to-Nineties alt.rock than a bunch of diverse tastes thrown out at random.
Forget the album's title, it's like a Hitchcock MacGuffin to lead you in and then astray.
This is 21stcentury urban music reflecting and commenting on these strange times in which we live, struggle and try to rise above.
This album isn't quite a survival kit, but it'll do until a better and maybe more optimistic one arrives.
“Patient and in control,” as singer Ollie Judge says at the start of Paddling.
A difficult but rewarding album.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp but it is also available on very limited edition vinyl
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