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 We
are currently blessed with a myriad of pleasantly weird bands. The
Flaming Lips have been ploughing their psychedelic pop furrow for
over a decade, Mercury Rev meander alongside them, Air are French
for crying out loud, and the Polyphonic Spree are probably being
monitored by all sorts of governments.
Well stand back, cos The Earlies have taken all of the above, microwaved
it and left it to cool on the windowsill. Whilst cooling, a giant
phoenix nicked off with the mixture, took it back to his nest in
the mountains of either Burnley or Texas (geography not important),
where he ate it and was promptly sick (though he felt strangely
good inside). The florescent vomit shimmied down into the sea and
sank as far as Atlantis, where a record company guru signed the
band up on the spot. Honest.
It sounds like there's tonnes of them - the range of instrumentation
and variation demonstrated thoughout the album is gob-smacking.
Uplifting while remaining a great deal darker than smiling retards
the Polyphonic Spree. 'One Of Us Is Dead' updates the Beatles 'A
Day in the Life' with the lyric, "I saw a newspaper today,
it read one of us is dead", while the electronic piano and
gentle melody creates a hopelessly despairing lullaby - the strangled
vocal evoking so many trans-
Atlantic acts.
'Wayward Song' could well be a work of genius. It's so gentle and
soothing - a new classical music. Don't expect too much to happen
in 'Slow Man's Dream' - it's a perfectly entitled song with a fantastic
juicy bass noise, flutes and ideas. Very reminiscent of the afore-mentioned
Mercury Rev but that is certainly no bad thing.
'Morning Wonder' has a drum loop that someone, please, will recognise
and tell me where I've heard it before. This is altogether more
tense, harder - reality coming closer as the long night ends,...
just need your bed now, "take me home". There's no lifting
of this jagged mood, 'The Devil's Country' has a fucked heartbeat
of a drum and mind-racing voices in your head. It swells to big
music then subsides and is as unsettling as chemical excess.
Finally we are let off the hook with the almost traditional ballad-y
piano of 'Song for #3', it's prettiness a blessed relief. 'Dead
Birds' closes the album and sums the whole experience up - classic
song-writing, flights-of-fancy arrangements, orchestral ambition,
talented musicians given free reign and going hell for leather....
then vanishing, culminating back with the melody and piano.
A breathtaking debut album, impossible to really define but all
the better for it. These were... the Earlies. This is... a triumph.
words: Roger Hadwen
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