The video that accompanies recent single, ‘Never Be Alone’ shows the band passively instigating a pub brawl amongst a dozen or so local hoodlums in a non-too illustrious drinking establishment in London’s notorious Bethnal Green. Allegedly banned by MTV the video just about sums up the dark, schizoid mental-as-anything duality of this release – and about as far away from the lush, harmonious greenery of the band’s debut, ‘Chemistry Is What We Are’ as you can get. Starting as any hard boozing session might with the jaunty and carefree merriment of ‘La Breeze’, the album moves through a veritable hotch-pot of mood swings and paranoia. And for those of you who have ever experienced the twitchy oddness of entering a bar you’re not acquainted with after a few unsteady joints – you’ll know what this album means: it’s an album of giddy madness (‘When I Go’), fear, mistrust (‘Never Be Alone, ‘The Way That I Live’) edgy self-consciousness (‘Helpless’) and incongruous joy (‘She’s In Mind’).
Alternately referencing the salubrious dark-matter of the Beatle’s Abbey Road, the baffling psychedelia of the Beach Boy’s ‘Smile’ album, and the spaced-out baroque of Cockney Rebel’s ‘Psychomodo’ it’s an album that still roots itself firmly in the present with a variety of electronic peripheral elements chattering mashed-like throughout; and with a label like Source behind you, it’s about as much as you’d expect.
Occasionally brilliant, always entertaining and armed and ready to please crossover lovers the length and breadth of this charming country.