This record has all the makings of being a bloody good spacerock LP if only it let itself go, dropped its arrangements in a hedge and wildly strapped itself to a passing comet that split the ether with its playful tail.
This record has all the makings of being a bloody good spacerock LP if only it let itself go, dropped its arrangements in a hedge and wildly strapped itself to a passing comet that split the ether with its playful tail.
Now this is a very good album indeed. You might wonder what you are letting yourself in for during the first few growling seconds of Rostov Could Get It, as Snib seems to be heading towards Chickenhawk or Castrovalva territory but, despite the seemingly fractious nature of the music on first listen, if you give this LP time you’ll notice it’s a very amiable, poppy release. Each track reveals itself, however slowly or obtusely to have a very sturdy melodic base. You could get a bit disoriented by the amount of time signature changes going on, and in that regard, tracks like Neo Tokyo and Peanut Worm are very much in the Henry Cow tradition of eccentric and accommodatingly pleasant British prog rock. Even the dissonant bits on Mega Mega Drive sound amiable and daft, but it’s not a bad thing.
I mentioned prog; you know, this record has all the makings of being a bloody good spacerock LP if only it let itself go, dropped its arrangements in a hedge and wildly strapped itself to a passing comet that split the ether with its playful tail. Or summat. Listen to Guilt and #33 and try to disagree with us. Elsewhere, Pay Off gets a little elegiac (there is a pop LP in here, trust me) with its fuzzy tail-out, and Soundtrack Your Death begins to resemble something the Soft Boys would have done if they’d been a post rock band. Last up we get more studious mashes of time, texture and key with Honey Badger and Clamp: the latter being the hardest and most monolithic track on the record.
It’s bloody good, this, really.