Lots of samples and beats collide, dismembered voices sometimes float through the remnants of songs like voices coming out of a dream and somehow in the middle of it all there are catchy pop songs (as in Proud Turkeys).
Lots of samples and beats collide, dismembered voices sometimes float through the remnants of songs like voices coming out of a dream and somehow in the middle of it all there are catchy pop songs (as in Proud Turkeys).
Thee More Shallows – Book of Bad Breaks
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Another cracking release… though I have to say it’s taken a couple of months to let this LP seep slowly into my consciousness. It’s a bonkers record, to be honest. There’s a feel of Low-era Bowie (if only in spirit, not sound). Or maybe it’s like a Guided By Voices CD with the fast forward button permanently pushed down. Or like a permanently off station radio. Lots of samples and beats collide, dismembered voices sometimes float through the remnants of songs like voices coming out of a dream and somehow in the middle of it all there are catchy pop songs (as in Proud Turkeys). It is an "art-school" record in that it is wilfully perverse, perverse to the hilt I should say… It has the feel of the last Fiery Furnaces release, Bitter Tea, what with all these weird tempo changes amidships… though the Furnaces kept this kind of indulgence in check.
Great hooks smash into grating sounds in Night at the Night School. Well, that’s before everything falls apart in the most spectacular fashion. There are great trip-hop moments too; Oh Yes, Another Mother is sublime stuff, and helped inordinately by the metronomic beat. Actually, it could be The White Mask, I can’t tell to be honest, as everything reels drunkenly into everything else. Oh, who cares?
It’s a wildly challenging listen, but if you like that sort of challenge, I beg of you; give it a go.
Words: Richard Foster