Personally I’ve been missing Malkmus and Albarn arsing around the lo-fi end of the quirky indie spectrum leafing through all manner of pasty hypochondriacs and eccentrics and telling us how it is with a bittersweet melody, a jangling raw guitar, a skewed dress code, a funny turn and bad posture. True, Blur 13 and Pavement are unlikely to sit as well with the style-over-substance subtext of our post-punk elite as they used to, and the Guided By Voices leaps of melodic faith may rough-ride over the jarring complexity of the arrangements, but if a British Sea Power take on American lo-fi with a bit of Mogwai and The Shins thrown in for good measure is where your pop plums dangle, then intense young Nottingham sextet, Seachange may suffice just sweet.
2 years in the making, ‘On Fire, With Love’ was originally conceived as a double-album with Mogwai/Delgados producer pulled in to plunder and tweak a sketchpad of folk-oriented ‘quiet songs’ that include the shuffling accordion-led lament, ‘Anti-Story’ and the cynical, wordy ‘In’ – a cylindrical stream of consciousness with everything from hand-claps, Noel Gallagher backing trax, a steamy chorus and crunchy guitars thrown into the brew. Elsewhere Pete Fletcher of the Escapologists is roped in for the loco-driven hooks and feedback of album stand-out, ‘Annie, Tacoma’, the super-charged wall of guitars that supports the infectious and anthemic, ‘Battleground’, the funky and angular cut and thrust of ‘Youth & Art’ (the only obvious reference to all that post-punk hokum here) and the jangly, shantying folk-song ‘Midsummer Fires’.
Wordy, literate, and just twisted enough to warrant an afternoon’s therapy, it’s a hugely ambitious album, hampered by too many cooks in the kitchen, perhaps, but joyfully bereft of all the forced rioting of Ricky Wilson and his chums.
Available now at the band’s website.