April Album Reviews Roundup
April, meant to be a month of spring sunshine, summery showers and cherry blossom. What have we had this year? Volcanoes, hail storms and general elections.
All feels a little end of days if you ask me and adding to that sensation comes this apocalyptic sounding record. ‘We Are A Unit’ (Brew Records, April 12) from Castrovalva is twenty seven minutes of absolute adrenaline charged insanity. In less than half an hour this Leeds three piece crash through twelve tracks of thumpingly heavy but tight as fuck funky craziness. Mixing monster beats, deep bass with hard as hell riffs and vocals that come from the scream it then scream it louder school of singing, tracks like ‘Thuglife’, ‘Bison Scissor Kick’ and, our particular favourite, ‘We Don’t Go To Ravenholm’ should be tearing up rock club dance floors across the country. They’re certainly going to be on my playlist.
Way down at the other end of the sonic spectrum is where the two man, massively DIY, Last Dinosaur ply their trade. ‘Hooray! For Happiness’ (Dearstereofan, April 19) was recorded on a shoestring, using a 16 track recorder, loop pedals and a whole heap of imagination and love. It’s worth the admission fee alone for the album’s opener ‘Every Second Is A Second Chance’. An epic slow burner that starts with an aching poignancy and gradually builds through tribal type drumming and chanting to an ecstatically euphoric climax. Breathtaking. The rest of the album never quite matches up to that tumultuous opening but is nevertheless filled with moments of startling beauty and gloriously melodic melancholy.
White Belt Yellow Tag have risen from the ashes of Your Code Name Is: Milo and create that sort of non-specific epic Indie music that seems to sell a lot of records these days. 'Methods' (Distiller Records, April 05) calls to mind Doves, Editors and even, say it quietly, Coldplay in its execution. Swirling guitars underpin soaring vocals and anthemic choruses; it’s all beautifully produced and well played but somehow lacks something in the soul department. Weirdly, despite all this, I really like it. I think on some level it appeals to the part of me that grew up with U2 and Simple Minds, it pushes the same sort of stadium buttons. Expect to see these guys at a festival near you soon.
Trans Am have long sounded like they inhabit another planet and with ‘Thing’ (Thrill Jockey, April 19) they have embraced the idea most whole heartedly. With track names like ‘Naked Singularity’, ‘The Silent Star’ and ‘Interstellar Drift’ it is unsurprising that the music contained herein sounds like the soundtrack to a late 70s noir Sci Fi film. The synths are well to the fore and the grooves hark back to the electro-rock of their earlier albums. All through there is a humour at work that positions the music somewhere between knowing pastiche and homage, but the infectious sleaziness of tracks like ‘Bad Vibes’ is just too good to ignore.
Also on a retro synth alchemy tip come France’s Fortune. As opposed to the Trans Am album, 'Staring At The Ice Melt' (Distiller Records, April 19) is a resolutely upbeat and poppy record very much in the MGMT vein. The recent single ‘Bully’ is typical of what’s on offer here; chirpy, fun but a little lightweight. It's the sort of thing you’ll hear blearing out of the bars of Hoxton this summer and entertaining enough, but nothing that stays with you once the stereo goes off.