Album reviews

You can decide amongst yourselves if this kind of clap-happy nonsense is good enough for you or not.

lyrics about love, loss and lost loves

One of them, Wino, sounds a bit like Mark Lanegan. The others don’t.

a rather wonderful, soulful little gem of a record

It takes my breath away.

Mutual Friends is an album to embrace.

Life Is People isn’t so much an album of songs but a personal hymn to one’s maker.

a sun drenched, West-coast delight of an album

Mann has an uncanny ability to make you feel guilty about something you’ve never even been involved with

Like being in the White Witch’s troika with a load of booze & fags, or finding out that Julie Andrews was really into the Elevators, this mix of teasing and haughty permanent winter could be fun and who fancies being wholesome anyway?

I half expect Sophia Loren to turn up at my door whilst this is playing, wearing a veil and saying “dahrlinkk, it iss ze vish off ze Emperor zat vee must go to Gaul”.

By this stage, the record truly is the sound of a C21st Workers Playtime and you can see what they got from hanging out with Matthew Herbert, that’s for sure.

A fine record and one that is a charming listen. While not pulling up any trees or making any statement about why it should inform this particular zeitgeist is a one you should listen to You’ll probably end up playing it on repeat.

So there you have it, the new Deerhoof LP. They just keep making great records, and have done ever since Rob Fisk’s time.

The great thing is that you never feel you’re being conned. Unlike all those awful, gauche attempts at amateurism churned out on nice little labels this past decade...this is a proper band, with a beat, with sex appeal and a sort of weird focus.

Sometimes there is just a slab of noise without any noticeable trickery: Petrified Spirits is a tribal rallying call, an exploratory drill for the sort of Psychicke energy lines that lie deep beneath the surface of Albion. Or a bloody atonal racket. It’s equally inspiring and revolting.

Like trying to get some surly teen to tidy their pit, you won’t get much change out of the enterprise if you don’t have a fair old vat of patience and understanding.

Fergus and Geronimo do seem to have a thing about the Romans; no less than three tracks are named after them. The same with aliens… both are depicted on the cartoon on the inner sleeve. I quite like this sketchy, Clinton-style daftness.

I think we can agree then that this is a strange but beguiling record; content to live by its own insular rules, seemingly intent at carving out some peculiar nest in pop’s Yggdrasil.

Other bits of the first EP are very fragile or diffuse, and get lost a wee bit in an out of focus blur of noises and samples. It’s a nice listen, mind, so we’re not being too critical.