A Distorted Reality.

I like to do this every year, but found myself shocked by the small number of new albums I’ve actually listened to this year.

1) The Twilight Sad – Forget the Night Ahead

Having seen them live as well this year, nothing was going to touch this. A departure from the post-rock/shoegaze of Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters, the albums sees a more krautrock influenced feel with all of the body of James Graham’s voice which was to be found in all earlier work. I Became a Prostitute is a standout, and just resonates with an energy unbecoming of this earth.

2) We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls

Evidently, 2009 has been the year of my Scot fetish: The Twilight Sad and WWPJ fulfilling this categorisation.  Again, energy to the hilt and a slight shoegaze-y twinge. It’s Thunder and it’s Lightning is archetypal of the band’s sound, instrumental and vocal dichotomies combining to form nothing short of miraculous melodies.

3) The Veils – Sun Gangs

Oh, how I love you Finn Andrews. Nothing short of love can describe what I feel for you. It burns in my loins and keeps me from sleep, you kind Kiwi gent. Your warm whining of epic vibrato without conscionable reason guides me to aural nirvana and keeps me in this one place despite its oscillatory warbling. The way you scream in Larkspur? Generation defining, if the kids today had any taste.

4) mewithoutYou – it’s all crazy! it’s all false! it’s all a dream! it’s alright

And so into another album they storm, talking of their personal relationship with God and not being preachy about it: to this, I lend them nothing but commendment. From the first song every thought a thought of You (which would lend itself so well to a song of distant admiration – or, in more common parlance, ’stalking’ – rather than this song of finding God) to the ending Allah, Allah, Allah, mewithoutYou never shy away from experimentation with instrumental themes as well as the lyrical.

5) Heaven in her Arms – Duplex Coated Obstruction

I have, historically, had a little bit of a Japanese thing too: more solid post-rock/screamo crossover, but now with a harder edge. I’ll admit, it’s more of the same from them, but they’ve always done what they do so well.

6) Emmy the Great – First Love

She’s a cute oriental (HK national, to be exact) girl: she was bound to end up here irrespective of music. Fortunately, her catchy rhythms and keen sense of rhyme and sense of humour in observations reserve her place here more solidly than a passing case of yellow fever on my part. 24’s parody of the godawful television show of the same name is simply delightful.

7) Cursive – Mama, I’m Swollen

Tim Kasher. Tim, Tim, Tim. Why can’t you ever get past the relationship drama which inspired Domestica? It’s OK, even if we are better off as animals, shooting From the Hips, your fans will love you unconditionally. Now, would a new Good Life album be too much to ask?

8) Brand New – Daisy

Jesse Lacey finds a voice all of his own and stops channelling Morrissey; and with good results.

9) Jesu – Opiate Sun

Fellow Brummie. Have to respect that leading to good metalgaze. Yes: good metalgaze.

10) MONO – Hymn to the Immortal Wind

Epic Japanese post-rock, beautifully arranged for a full orchestra.

Living in London, this gives me license to walk around the City of London in the vain hope that one day I should aspire to work somewhere are a professional. I decided to take photos whilst I was knocking about there and these are to be found in the full version of this entry.

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‘Go to university,’ they say. ‘It’ll broaden your horizons and outlook on the world, not just from the academic side but also from the social aspects of meeting people from all over the world,’ they implore. ‘It’ll be the best three years of your life,’ they reiterate to a point borderlining brainwashing.

It’s all bullshit.

Sure, university is definitely useful as a means to an academic end, and also indeed for its unintended end of social interaction; but there is nothing of the much fabled ‘broadening of horizons’ to be found there. The people you meet will, with very few exceptions, have an agenda and nothing but the will to fulfill it. the sort of intellectual debate which higher education is fabled for will not occur until you find a group of people with at least the tolerance to hear your views, rather than immediately disregard them and use your cessation of speech as nothing as a marker for the starter of their own. Again, these people will be hard to find, as illustrated by reading Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals: ‘disputes with men, pertinaciously obstinate in their principles, are, of all others, the most irksome’ – I would care to wager that David’s levels of ‘irk’ were ‘pertinaciously’ high.

There’s another problem: there’s every chance (unless you’re doing a real, rather than social science or any other humanities degree) that you’re going to be expected to read shit like that. There is a world of literature written in a manner written in prose so prosaic yet unnecessarily flowery with punctuation that you will become delightfully au fait with over the next three years of your life. Minutes will turn to hours will turn to days as you battle with these books you will end up reading two to three times overall in order that you actually understand what’s going on; and that’s just hoping that you’re not going to be educated in the ‘real’ meaning behind the text: something completely abstract and definitely not explicitly stated in the text, just to spite the hours you’ve spent in a vain attempt to understand. Following on from this, your essays are never designed to actually have the questions answered directly: ‘what is x‘ never means ‘what is x‘, rather ‘what is x? What do leading scholars think of x? What problems does x pose?’ followed by more and more implied questions ad infinitum.

As a first year student, enjoy your halls. These generally basic buildings with generally basic amenities will be regarded as luxury once you leave and end up in your bedsit in that rough part of town, with the leaky toilet which never quite works properly. Paying £2 for use of washing machines and £1 for tumble driers will seem like the rational choice once you remove yet another pair of limescaled jeans, and they are no doubt your favourite this time. Sure, your doors may be set square in this hovel you now inhabit, but that offset door which would never close had a certain element of character and charm about it. It was quaint: a testament to the experiences of others who had done godknowswhat to that door. Of course, your time in halls won’t be without some shortfalls which won’t (most likely) befall you in your later years: some fucking idiot turning off your freezer (to conserve electricity, apparently)* and spoiling around £20 worth of your frozen food probably being at the top of this list. Tasteless frozen-thawed-and-refrozen sweetcorn will never happen to you again.

And yet I’d change nothing: reading Machiavelli’s casual sexism makes it all worthwhile.

*I should probably point out here that I took that point a little far: it was most likely just an accident. But I loves my food.

Rating:

At a recording pace of around one album per year since being signed as a solo artist, Frank Turner is definitely an artist for whom I have a fair amount of respect: his punk ethic has not been lost since his change of pace from Million Dead to his folk-rock efforts as Frank Turner. The quality of his output has rarely wavered since Campfire Punkrock and starts off strongly once again in this album.

The album opens with the upbeat piano, overdriven electric guitar and drums of Live Fast, Die Old, a song resonant of the will of humans to run and ruin their own lives. Turner’s voice is as beautifully hoarse as it has always been, and the newfound addition of an organ to proceedings adds a delightful new dimension to his music. The chanting of the song is somewhat reminiscent of Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism, and is just as effective in highlighting Turner’s voice as it was Gibbard’s. The certain ability which Frank Turner holds in being able to motivate in his songwriting is shown once again through lyrics in this song such as ‘it won’t last, so be bold/live fast, die old‘; with the crescendo of drums at the end serving as punctuation to this universally applicable message. Try this at Home is Turner’s brand of meta-music; whilst it’s lazy music-about-music, it’s witty and incisive cleverly brash punk-ethic propaganda; the beat which carries the song along is unapologetically folk-punk to the extent which it would make the early work of Billy Bragg blush.

Dan’s Song is a Summer song if ever there was one: a song with an acoustic guitar in a major key about friends and drinking in parks; the very epitome of British Summers. The development of the instrumentation as the song goes on is also symptomatic of aspersions between this song and Summer: the bright tones of a harmonica cast rays of melodic delight upon the resonant ground of acoustic guitar chords. Poetry of the Deed is a return to Turner’s more sonorous work: electric guitars deliquesce into the mesh of Turner’s voice with the percussion of the track. The refrain of ‘life is too short to live without poetry, if you’ve got soul darling, now come on and show it me’ is perfectly demonstrative of Turner’s continuing theme of the importance of the Arts and living life rather than being the passenger of time. Isabel is a more downtempo track, and is ultimately a let-down compared to prior comparable efforts (see Jet Lag for comfirmation of this point) – it’s not downtempo and compelling, it’s downtempo and dull. Dreadfully so. Even Turner’s typically wry and insightful lyricisms miss their mark here,m which is a rare occurrence.

The Fastest Way Home is a return to form, and a song of devotion made more than believable by Turner’s borderline scream in places and a drop to muted guitar strums amidst ‘darling, oh my darling you know that everything that I do is to try to make me good enough for you‘: the drop to barebones-strumming making for Turner’s voice to appear more naked and more poignant. The oscillatory guitar lines add body to the whole experience and work wonderfully alongside Turner’s vocals. Turner’s penchant for pseudo-political commentary is resurrected in Sons of Liberty, with little positive to say about it. Much of the commentary seems forced as it has become expected of him; the melodies too familiar within the genre and vocals lacking Turner’s individual charm. Zane Lowe’s call of The Road being the ‘hottest record in the world’ wasn’t far off: Turner’s vocals return to their sometimes haunting, sometimes transfixing norm, with vocal faults intact; swirling in symbiosis with delicious guitar parts.

Another shortcoming of the album comes in the form of Faithful Son: a song, whilst delicate in instrumentation and even Turner’s voice, most drab and another ‘plodding’ song; the tale of faith through paternal strife is an overplayed concept. Richard Divine is another carbuncle on this album: it features a strange rhythm which Turner’s vocals seem unable to keep up with, and little in the form of lyrical content up to his usual standards. Sunday Nights and Our Lady of the Campfire do little to improve the quality at the tail of the album, and they’re both weak songs lacking the fire which Turner is so capable of delivering. Journey of the Magi makes sure that the album ends with a squelch rather than a band through its lacklustre delivery and pacing.

From its strong start, it truly is a shame to see the album end so poorly; but it’s more than likely symptomatic of an artist looking to evolve from the formula which has come to be expected from him and faltering short of the mark. All that can be hoped for is a return to form for album number four.

Rating:

This is the only time I have ever even considered reviewing a single, but there’s a more than good enough reason for it: excitement over the 22nd September, Daisy’s (Brand New’s fourth studio album) release. Three years after the excellent The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me, which itself was released three years after the phenomenal Deja Entendu – if the progress between those two albums is anything to go by (not mentioning the progress between Your Favourite Weapon and Deja), another three years of maturing should allow Daisy to be just about the best album ever written.

Indeed, there has been progress: Jesse Lacey has stopped trying to be Morrissey (anyone who disagrees with me on that point should listen to track two, whether it be titled as Untitled 2 or, hilariously by some fans, Morrissey) from the Fight Off Your Demons demos) and seems to have finally found a vocal dynamic all of his own: coarse, yet elegant. Lacey’s previous point to fans at Lollapalooza 2008 that they should be watching Explosions in the Sky instead of Brand New seems to have set root in their newer music: the guitar parts in At the Bottom are more experimental than any Brand New work thus far; heavy tremolo combined with parts of subtle quietness really cast reference to their post-rock peers. The song, thematically, does tick all of the Brand New boxes: we have drugs, we have death and we have friendship; it’s a song essentially of the theme ‘I’d scratch your back, but would you mine?’

If this one song is any indicator of the quality of Daisy, I am incredibly excited. Progression has been shown here, with Lacey becoming more aggressive on record and the music taking a more complex turn from the relative simplicity of the music on The Devil and God. Roll on 22nd September.

Rating:

I am fully aware that this album was released ten years ago, but I find music anything but ephemeral: the very nature of the CD/vinyl-press permits music to live for as long as it is desired to be played. Now that this pseudo-philosophical point addressing the nature of music and its transience has been dealt with, I can get on with the review:

The album opens with the track Stolen Car: a delicate introduction of lightly plucked guitar and a low-pitched, somewhat sombre strings section leading into Orton’s elegant full-bodied and low-toned vocals. Higher-pitched harmonies melt into Orton’s voice in a manner most similar to the evanescence of a lover’s embrace: perfect effortlessness. The bereft tone set by the string section at the beginning of the song is never lifted, save for a short electric guitar solo around half way through, and even the overdriven lead parts toward the end tell a sorrowful story: even that which would be uplifting is itself a sinking ship. Beautiful misery.

‘She’s deep as a well, she’s deep as a well‘: once again, Orton’s unique vocal style is demonstrated; and this time at its top end. Sweetest Decline breaks any possible illusions of a pattern being set by Stolen Car: a brighter piano lead sets the tone for the song, accompanied by a far more jolly violin part, meeting delightfully with Orton’s discovery of the concept of a major key. ‘What are regrets? What are regrets?‘ – the song’s message is one of self-improvement and certainly is convincing amidst this incredible positive atmosphere of swelling violins and jangling keys. Couldn’t Cause Me Harm is another more upbeat song, with the higher-yet-husky nature of Orton’s vocals being explored. Xylophone and an African-esque percussive influence combine to form a slightly eccentric pop sound.

So Much More is another downtempo track, with the slow pace of the music accentuating the seemingly painstakingly wide shifts in vocal pitch; shifts more than dramatic enough to show Orton’s complete vocal range. Soft and delicate piano carries the listener through the song with casual ease; floating arrangements for troubled minds – minds ‘looking for air to breathe’ as Orton herself puts it. Pass in Time allows for a folk-pop cliché to be well and truly fulfilled: it’s a male-female collaboration, but one of a quality high enough for this to be excused. Bright guitar and piano meet with darker string parts in the flux of Orton’s voice meshing with that of Terry Callier’s; itself a harmony of great contrast amidst the contrast of guitar and strings gradually being more joyous throughout the song.

The title track (obviously, Central Reservation) starts simply with only Orton’s voice, a quiet guitar and piano: a trifecta which is to lead into nothing more complex, save for the addition of strings later. This simplicity of timbre and texture in the song definitely works in its favour: the rich nature of Orton’s vocals is stressed under the (frankly) bland underlying music. A more electronic feel is introduced to Orton’s music in All Stars Seem to Weep, an upbeat number introduced by a sweeping synth line. Orton’s deliciously sustained vocals over this further minimalist backing is an undeniable aural treat, and once again finds simplicity to be in its favour.

Unfortunately, it just had to be that a singer in her genre would just have to write meta-music: a somewhat reflexive song about the songwriting process is found in Love Like Laugher. Music about music is, to me, just laziness as does bias me against a song pretty strongly; combining this with a stereotypically bittersweet love song just leads to what is inevitably to be a musical train wreck: the muted guitar singals the inital derailing; Orton’s weakened, less tremulous voice the screaming of those thrown to the sides of their carriage. Blood Red River is a return to form: Beth Orton’s unleashes her siren song unrestrained once again over muted strings, and it is nothing but wonderful. Devil Song is much of the same, and that is no bad thing.

Feel to Believe ends the album on an uplifting note, Orton’s voice at its major peak; sole acoustic guitar for accompaniment. Throughout the album, Orton throws hints to the lyrical subtleties of Regina Spektor, the nature of the songstress exhibited by the likes of Leslie Feist and Chan Marshall and the musicanship shown by the likes of Joni Mitchell: to be able to draw such comparisons is truly a compliment to her, but it can’t be said that this amalgamam works perfectly. Her songs suffer, at times, by sounding fairly similar to one another. That aside, I can do nothing but recommend this album heartily.

Rating:

The Veils MySpace

Finn Andrews is a revelation: throughout the backcatalogue of The Veils’ material, he’s always managed to produce a variety in his vocals pretty much unmatched by their genre’s peers.  From warbles to cracking of the voice to animalistic screams, there’s always been that little spice in their music to make them instantly separable from would-be contemporaries: Sun Gangs is no exception.

The introductory track, Sit Down by the Fire, starts with the delicate tinkling of piano keys and the lightest of percussion: this combination soon to be met by a warbling Andrews. In comes the full band, and with full effect: the plodding percussion so typical of the Veils is soon introduced, but not in a manner reminiscent of any of their prior work: there’s more of a seeming purpose to it. Rather than taking a back seat as it had in prior efforts, the percussive element of the music is brought to the fore, and with a wonderful effect of creating a sense of minimalism admist the complexities of multitracked music. Sun Gangs, named (quite obviously) in a fit of eponymism, is a step down in tempo and demontrates further Andrews’ range: fragility being the face card here, replete with the most endearing of vocal faults. Piano and bass lines lead these most wonderful of flaws into a simple, yet somehow rousing, chorus of ‘Where I am going you can’t save me.’

The Letter and Killed by the Boom are the more typical fare of hypnotic guitar mixed with prominent percussive instrumentation, yet still find a niche of their own through their somewhat innovative use varying tones to accompany the state of the vocals perfectly: the guitar manages to somehow flit from sounding angry one moment to fragile another; distortion and delay shown to be the most useful of tools for creating moods. It Hits Deep is probably the weakest track on the album and may well have only served as a vocal masturbatory act for Andrews: whilst his ability to shift moods in tone is admirable (I may have made my appreciation clear by now), this track just seems to labour upon this one trick, when it’s clearly apparent that the band are a pony of multiple finesses.

The vivacity and sheer energy of the band are once again adroitly demonstrated by Three Sisters: the resonance of the guitars amidst a minimal drum pattern create a wonderful depth for the wails of Andrews to find a home in. In a horribly incoherent lack of foresight, The House She Lived In brings the reader back down to a low-tempo state with a shock and really does rather interrupt the flow of the album: even if it is a delicate and (dare I say it) ‘pretty’ song with male-female multi-layered vocals in the chorus creating a warm atmosphere.

Scarecrow, however, does flow well on from this with simple, high guitar notes accompanying a subtle   in a delicate mesh. Larkspur is the peak of the album: its instrumentation is simply divine and Andrews’ voice reaches each and every one of its multiple facets and the music touching on every one of the Veils’ disparate influences. The song is almost post-rockish in scope and the intensity of its build up and break down amidst the screams of ’something’s got a hold of me.’ Begin Again ends the album well and with balance: whilst less texturally thick than Sit down by the Fire, it has some deal of symmetry with it and serves to round off the experience of the album as a whole.

Truly, this is definitely a peak of 2009 thus far: no other band captures my imagination quite the like The Veils, especially with their unique brand of ‘indie’ which takes a little from everything within the confines of a genre which lacks definition. They’re a wonderful way to find eclecticism in a single place.

Rating:

Honesty and earnestness: two qualities missing from mainstream music in this current day and age with emphasis being put on what would sell well rather than that which matters: heart and motivation. What we have here is most definitely a return to these ideals of truth in art; coming from a band whose tagline is ‘commercially unviable since 2000.’ Perhaps a pedant would point out a possible irony and hypocrisy over them releasing an album for commercial consumption, as they have here with Lighting and Electrical, but it is their first, and they have yet to be tainted by the allure of the grandeur of life of rock stars. This is simple, honest folk music with no purpose other than artistic expression. It is pure.

The initial sole guitar chord strums of Old Souls are the first sign of the style to be demonstrated on the album: minimalist yet effective accompaniment to heavenly vocals. The harmonies of dual vocals over this simplistic chord strumming and pedal-steel plucking create a calm, almost serene, soundscape, with its termination into a sole female voice in the outro being a soul-wrenching way to go about things (of course, this could just be my predilection towards female vocals).

Dragonfly only has one thing in common with Old Souls, and that being in the use of an acoustic guitar. A new dynamic of male-female dual vocals is added, and comes close to sounding playful amidst the tales of indifference, accidents and modern communication. The introduction of electric guitar and percussion in this track also goes a certain way to showing them to be more than one-trick ponies. Sharpening a Blade is a wonderful song demonstrating willful separation from an ex-partner in a non-cliché manner, with the duality of acoustic and electric guitars being shown once again in its full glory.

Feelin’ Blue starts in the downtempo, quiet manner which has become expected of the music of Friends of the Stars by this point in the album, but slowly develops into a forceful (by their standards) song of devotion in the wake of pseudo-depression. It is really quite wonderful – the voices and instruments blend to form three minutes, eighteen seconds of perfection.

Nobody’s Out There serves to show the sheer range and skill on offer from the one female vocalist: her vibrato when sustaining notes is eccentric yet ever so endearing, and just furthers the lovesick message of the song. The (Out of) Jail Fire shows a marked departure from the tone of the album thus far: uptempo and bright, as opposed the previous downtempo subtlety, whilst still telling a tale of love lost. The male vocals and music here are somewhat reminiscent of Tim Kasher’s work with The Good Life – that, coming from me, is a very favourable comparison. Fork in the Road continues in this vein, and continues to draw possible conclusions most favourable. The next track, Been Down, returns to the male-female dual vocals and simplicity of the rest of the album: and it is a most welcome return to the previous beauty.

Monday Morning is another song with beautiful female vocals over simple, effective guitar strumming and plucking; and Why Are There Movies of Jane Seymour? ends the album on a high note: this one songs demonstrates everything wonderful about the band: honesty, earnestness, simplicity, paradoxical dichotomy – a certain complexity in simplicity. I hope that success finds them.

Rating:

People just have to try to bend the barriers of genres of music, don’t they? It makes the job of any would-be music critic infinitely more difficult: you immediately can’t pigeonhole bands to be a complete snob or to express your indie cred anymore. Here, with All the Pictures, a new monster is born: a blend of folk, electronica and pop unlike all such blends I’ve heard before. Nuances of the music of Patrick Wolf, Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, Four Tet and even the playful eccentricity of Kid Carpet can be seen in the delightful music on display.
Even so much as the opening bar first track on the album (Fingers) lets you know what you’re in for over the course of the I Have A Brother! album: guitar lines bordering on the twee of early Death Cab for Cutie songs lead you in to a song of the most quaint of vocal deliveries and varied instrumentation smacking of influences which I have already mentioned; however, the music has a certain quality all of its own – it’s both playful and serious; dark and light.
The next two songs on the album, The Deaf Boy’s Dad and Pretty Green Shoes tell more sombre tales, and the music reflects this whilst remaining generally uptempo. Twice more, a lack of inhibition with experimentation with varying timbres and textures is shown: perhaps so much so to demonstrate what could almost be a disdain for the now almost ‘standard guitar + bass + drums + whiney, accented vocals = music’ formula so many bands are seen to follow nowadays. All the Pictures break from this mould and aspire for better, more noble things. It is music for the love of music, and it shows.
Kings is a song of, once again, dramatic instrumentation, with a slight bias towards synthesiser parts reminiscent of the toy keyboards we’ve all had at some point: they provide a lovely hook to an already excellent song. For JFK, For You is a nice demonstration of All the Pictures’ sampling ability and love of simplistic yet catchy melodies. It also serves as an interlude and part introduction for the next track Fish.
Most definitely my ‘stand out’ track of the album, Fish starts with a hook which won’t let go and features such memorable and (as much as it pains me to use the adjective) ‘sweet’ lyrics such as ‘if I had the money, I would buy you the world; but I don’t, so I steal it instead’ in combination with tambourine percussion and keyboards sharp enough to cut through the drumbeat is enough to make this song become an instant favourite of anyone with a heart. Catherine of Aragon is much the same as far as poppy hooks are concerned: they latch into your brain in an almost viral manner and never let go. Never.
Fish Reprise is indeed little more than a repetition of the instrumental themes of Fish, but knowing my thoughts on the original, it’s an easy conclusion to make that that didn’t bother me in the slightest. The Man Who Saved the World is the most instrumentally thick of the album’s 11 songs, but it suits the almost vehement nature of the vocals most well. From its pleasant start, the song gradually builds up over the first two minutes to form an almighty crescendo, and then declines again to the end of the song. It’s as close as this album gets to ‘shock-and-awe’ tactics to maintain the audience’s interest, but it most definitely works.
Hymn for the Titanic is another small instrumental track most befitting of the type of music on display, and introduces Smile! Smile! Smile Today!, the final track of the album, with great splendour. The song itself is strong: very strong. It’s not one of those final tracks which will be forgotten due to its monotony and the listener’s decline in concentration: if yours had declined, it would be pulled back by the upbeat, engaging and (most importantly) danceable nature of this fine display of Birmingham creativity. It’s twee, it’s happy: it’s everything that you want from folky electronica. It’s the future, and I hope it doesn’t go by unseen.

Even Flowers Kill’s MySpace

You have to love a band who can reference pop (or otherwise) culture, and do it well: Graf Orlock made their entire fame on it. Coventry’s Even Flowers Kill begin, on paper, in very good books with me: with an EP titled in reference to the enigmatic Schrödinger’s Cat and a Fight Club reference in the title of I am Jack’s Smirking Revenge. The music, from its offset, is no disappointment either: Ruth has Information That Will Destroy You starts with delicate candour – a sonar-esque sound is emitted from what I can only assume to be an effects-laden guitar or synth, whilst a five-note lead part is played above it. After forty seconds, a gentle ascension in volume reaches its peak and is met with a gut-wrenching scream amidst the introduction of pounding guitar chords and drums. A second of chaos, and the prior delicacy is restored. And again. And again. This is repetition, but not repetitive: the juxtaposition of heavy and soft serves merely to keep the listener guessing as to the intention of the band, and fortunately for the impatient, this is soon made clear. Chugging rhythm parts intertwine with the smooth lead vocals and more harsh background screaming. It’s a rich, complex texture befitting of a band labelling themselves as ‘experimental’. Fast-paced, technical drumming is demonstrated throughout, and never seems to let up. There is an almost ska-like instrumental section at around 2 and a half minutes into the song, which the lets into the viscerally of the song prior to this point.

I Love You Kerry McKenna, Please Come Home is immediate. To say the least. In fact, immediacy may be too loose a quality to use to describe the sheer intensity and suddenness of the musical onslaught which comes from the outset. A scream-chant dichotomy is established ridiculously quickly and takes the form of  a question-answer-question-answer dynamic rhythmically. It is divine noise; it is a waking call to the gods themselves. Sensitivity is not a quality which this song is devoid of however: the silky lead vocals make an appearance again, and it is Good. We face another transition into the heavier side of the band’s music once again, and another question-answer session is set-up between smooth and hoarse. An Envy-alike talking vocal session finds a home here, and it fits so well with the pauses in guitar playing.
Dick Wang is a Stinking Liar: a scream followed by the almost archetypal shredding of guitars into harmonics which can only be considered unholy. It’s really a horrible sound, but one with an almost pitiful appeal. Once again, we see the ever-transitory movements between heavy and soft; smooth and grainy. It has to be said that this song is truly the weakest on the album, with no real innovation present, but it’s still pleasant to listen to, even if one does feel that one has heard it all before. Machiavelli vs. The Little Prince is a step back onto the Path of Righteousness for the band: slight syncopation in rhythm and bright, trebly guitar leads introduce the cacophony which is bound to come. And when it comes, it truly does come: it comes with no ability to relent. Screams, bass drums, deep riffs: they all find a home here. A chant which can only be described as ‘epic’ develops and carries the song along to its conclusion, even in its absence. Clever little lead parts come into and out of hearing with a technical bombasticity bordering on the pretentious.

I am Jack’s Smirking Revenge caused me to become Jack’s sense of glee and mirth: blending technicality and brute force will do that for me. And I think that there’s an accordion in there. Whilst some of this EP borders on the hackneyed and overdone, there’s more than enough innovation to tide anyone over, and more than enough to make them winners in my eyes.