Essentially the band I’m listening to most at the moment is the rather opinion-dividing Wild Beasts. I have to say I’m pretty much smitten by them and have been since I saw them supporting Tricky and dying a protracted death at the Barbican last year. I may have more to say about them in the near future.
Now that's a cover!
I have also been listening to this, which is multi-instrumentalist Steve Moore in his Fulci/Argento* soundtrack mode. Actually Moore’s another guy (see below) who seems to be obsessed with a certain overripe Seventies/early Eighties aesthetic, and his remix of Ghenghis Tron last year, effectively turning them into Tangerine Dream soundalikes, was certainly the most radical of the set. Although Tobacco getting them to somehow sound like Black Moth was also pretty inspired. The split with Maserati is also pretty fine, two phat slabs of cod-Kraut
Junior Boys always struck me as one of those bands you worked hard to like on the basis that they were smart and aiming for something substantially different to the run of the mill indy/rock set of references, trying to constellate an alternate set of influences that ran through Sinatra, Roxy, Visage, Prince and Two Step, a kind of exquisitely moribund melange of the purple and the grey. Smart people liked them and for compelling sounding reasons, it was just that they didn’t sound very compelling once the cd was in the drive. In fact they sounded half-realized. I struggled manfully with the last album for a few months when it came out and haven’t been back to it since. However I have had their latest “ Begone Dull Care” on heavy rotation for the past twenty four hours.
It manages the tricky feat of being both instantly engaging and nuanced and layered enough to reward a bit of deeper listening ( is that a Harold Budd sample?) I can’t be bothered anatomizing it (novel to finish on a rare day off work due to snow!) suffice to say that if you didn’t like the first album but wanted to like it, you’ll like this. And if you did like the first album I can only assume this will blow you away.
2 comments:
God was a 1980s keyword for sure, but let's not forget Death.
Say what you will about that decade, but they didn't fuck about with their names, did they?
Early noughties key word was surely 'disco'(death disco, mobile simian -, shit disco - , there's even a zombie disco).
God vs Disco. What does that say about the era?
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