Arresting, intelligent art rock and electronica, krautrock and psychedelia and a marriage of the analogue and electronic, all intermingle wonderfully different and intelligent new LP by the London band fronted by Rhys Edwards. Opener Picto encapsulates something of their unusual musical melting pot, collage style - clever, intricate, clattering rhythms, haunting vocals, and unusual, combinations of sound such as piano and horns, while another single, Square Root of None, has postpunk semi-spoken vocals and angular guitars. Their lyrics, such as on the slower, crunching rhythm and synth sheen of Build A Box Then Break It, which has a Radiohead and Portishead feel, focuses on the album’s themes - our fractured experience of reality through the prism of small, swiping screens and seeking to find identity, reality, meaning: “Truth is in a biro pen / Truth is in a violin / You’re big in small letters / Your mind is a weight / A bird into feathers from violet to grey / Must be stuck and hit the thousandth wall.” As they summarise: “The album’s greater theme is isolation and alienation in an online world where it seems everybody around you is constantly exhibiting themselves, living in public wanting to be seen and heard. The age of ‘individuality’ is lonely, it’s a room of concave mirrors, and with this in mind, we set upon making our most collective effort; ‘It’s back to strength in numbers, count in fives.”
This Time I’m Present is a mesmeric miasma of synths, dreamy vocals and psychedelia (“Your future joy and future sorrow / Falls real foul of the unwritten now”). Showroom Poetry is a a grungey, beautiful, downbeat swing and pleasing wordplay: “All I need is hope, trust, food, and water / Laid out in front of me in Times New Roman order”), Expo is a woozy, otherworldly indie, Weights & Measures has a jazz-chord light-footedness, and further unfettered indie-pop-psych experimentalism continues into the final tracks A Modern Low and Incomplete Symphony, which has something a hybrid of Pink Floyd and Teenage Fanclub, with gentle self-deprecation: “It′s an incomplete symphony/ Rotten in rhymе / But most of it should suffice / It's an incomplete symphony/ Moment in time/ But who says the future′s bright? / 'Cause I′m done for / Got no more tonight.” A fascinatingly original collage of sounds and genres, capturing the confusion of these misfiring modern times with intelligence, sensitivity and originality. Out on Full Time Hobby.
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