The fierce, rage-filled Bristol post-punk band’s fifth album has an unfamiliar, far more tender but wider selection of sounds, this dynamic range of love songs intriguingly experimental, less shouty, more melodious. Vocalist Joe Talbot still has a unmistakable guttural delivery, and can, like the rest of the band, explode with angry energy (see the stormy Gift Horse), but opener IdeaO1 begins with rippling piano. Pop Pop Pop is an oddball synth-rinsed ode to “freudenfreude”, the opposite to shadenfreude, finding joy in others’ joys. The powerful, slow-building Roy has the usual dark thrum of bass, but Talbot’s voice has a far bigger range, and co-writer and guitarist Mark Bowen’s guitar comes from another far twangier era. Grace is a central track mixing this new palette of styles - ghostly, tender, stormy, pacing, and perhaps comes from the influence of co-producer Nigel Godrich, best known for his work with Radiohead. The usual fuzzy guitar pace, thump and punch reappears on tracks such as the excellent, punky feedback-filled Hall & Oates, the rumbling but experimental Jungle (but in which Talbot finds peace “save me from me …. I’m found I’m found I’m found”), and and on the catchy Dancer, but there’s definitely a shift towards mellower experimentalism, on that song joined by James Murphy and Nancy Whang from LCD Soundsystem. Always a great band live, but this time, deep into this album, their studio work brings a far more colourful range and sounds and emotions to enjoy, a softer g in the Tangk. Out on Partisan Records.
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