The daft union of brass and wibbly electronics in the intro sets up a breezy song of lust which should have Neil Hanlon drooling.
King Creosote – Flick the Vs
http://www.dominorecordco.com/ http://www.munichrecords.com/
Golly, check that opening track. I wasn’t expecting vocoder. No One Had it Better is so good it’s taken me quite a time to get past it and get round to listening to the rest of the album. It’s a weird, unexpected track, which I suppose is its main charm. The promo notes say it’s a Krautrock-style romp, but being someone who listens to Cluster outtakes & Witthüsser & Westrupp live tracks for fun, I’d say it’s very much not Krautrock. To my mind rather, it reminds me of a lost New Order track for something like Low Life or Brotherhood. Which means it’s fantastic.
Elsewhere the surprising sounds continue. Two Frocks at a Wedding begins like a King C song but becomes something very different indeed, things spiral upwards into an evermore elegiac lament only to morph into a daft bleeping stomp which has a touch of the Super Furries about it. No Way She Exists is a cracker too. The daft union of brass and wibbly electronics in the intro sets up a breezy song of lust which should have Neil Hanlon drooling. And what the bloody heck’s going on with Rims? One minute it’s threatening to go all Oklahoma on our asses, then you think Black Lace & Florian Scheider have turned up. Despite this sounding like the aural equivalent of a spaghetti pudding, it sounds pretty fine, trust me.
There are moments of quiet too. Curtain Craft is a lovely simple song, possibly my favourite on the LP. The track is initially kept free of strange noises save for the tinkle of a xylophone and a tremendous stabbing of (a brass section? You tell me…), until the accompaniment of accordion KC brings things majestically to a close.
Top LP. And check that opening track out.
Words: Richard Foster