Singers who can’t sing are intensely subjective and tricky things for reviewers. Sometimes they work for you, and sometimes they don’t and it’s hard to say why either way. Singers who can’t sing usually crawl along the root note of a chord occasionally leaping up to something higher before ducking back down to the safety of the Dah-na-nah.
It’s hard for me to imagine John Lydon screaming ‘Anger is an energy’ any other way than the way he does it on ‘Rise’, and while the Psychedelic Furs have swaggered and flounced magnificently and for years on the back of Richard Butler’s three note epics, I still think Charlatans’ vocals have all the grace and subtlety of a kazoo. Which makes it hard for me to write about ‘Manu’ Labescat’s vocals on the charming and understated Lucky Elephant album ‘Star SignTrampoline’. It’s an acquired taste, and to me it lacks the resonance that the musical arrangements have.
The album has a lovely opening with the eponymous ‘Lucky Elephant’, an instrumental which has the disarming simplicity of a children’s TV theme or a soundtrack for an Indie film like Juno. Recorded on 2” analogue tape there is a warm plonk of piano notes under wisps of distortion, creating a sound that is lo fi, gorgeous and uplifting. Despite its leisurely pace there is a momentum created by the looping and layering of simple melodies and it is all just wonderfully and evocatively sunlit.
The next song, ‘Edgar’ has a similar feel musically, albeit in waltz time. Labescat’s vocals are an added ingredient which to me is a thin, grey smear at odds with the rest of the arrangement. I feel a heel saying that and need to add that Manu adds some lovely melodica playing to the album.
By the third track, however, I have got over myself and am settling into an accepting mood. His French accent and earnestness work better with Red Ties Vs The Bees, with its shoegazer guitar sections and stabbing interludes.
The album continues as a combination of indie-guitar and toy-instrument whimsy and floats and shimmers through tracks such as ‘Modern Life, Changing People’ and ‘Neptune’.
Labescat’s vocals grow on the louder, darker tracks such as ‘The Pier’ and ‘Reverend Tilsley and His Magic Lantern’ which has toy-piano sounds and reggae beats as if CBeebies were covering Hard-Fi and where Labescat’s Gallic mewling is positively sexy.
All in all, ‘Star Sign Trampoline’ is a moody, gentle album that gently tugs on your sleeve asking to be friends. It’s a collection of sweet and simple indie songs and the occasional dreamy instrumental and I liked it although I can’t help feeling that had Cat Power supplied some of the vocals it would have been one of the albums of the year.