Music
Album reviews, plus Ken Walton on Winterplay at Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall
POP
Django Django: Marble Skies
Ribbon Music
JJJJ
Field Music: Open Here
Memphis Industries
JJJJ The Spook School: Could It Be Different?
Alcopop! Records
JJJ
There is never really a bad time to plunge into the Django Django soundworld – an escapist collage of rock, electronica, indie, psychedelia and funk, created by four Edinburgh College of Art expats based in London – but a new album from these wideeyed explorers is a welcome way to brighten up January.
Since arriving fully-formed and richly eclectic six years ago, the band have journeyed from hand-stitched debut album to pimped and primped in a professional studio on the followup Born Under Saturn. For their next move, they have found a happy midpoint, where they are free to tinker and experiment to whatever level of sophistication they please.
As a result, Marble Skies is a slicker and calmer trip in places but still defined by their sense of sonic adventure. The title track, inspired by gaping at a spectacular stormy sky in Chicago, is an analogue synth pop canter through a retro-futuristic landscape on a fantasy-fuelled quest, and there are further evocative flights of fancy dotted across the album.
The first single Tic Tac Toe finds them in familiar space cowboy territory, with a rockabilly rhythm, echoey vocals delivering searching lyrics and a punky pace to the verses. But there’s an elegant wistfulness to much of the album, which is not dissimilar to Beck’s use of dreamy melodies tooled up with funky frills.
Former Slow Club vocalist Rebecca Taylor guests on Surface to Air ,atrim pop tune with elements of modern R&B production, while Sundials is a dreamy psych pop number underpinned by a leisurely Italian house-influenced piano groove and a jazzy burst of soprano saxophone, the like of which would often signify a shortcut to escapist glamour on a slew of 80s pop tunes.
It is this fluent combination of magnetic melodies and musical boundary blurring which is Django Django’s strong suit – and is also kindred territory for Field Music ,the much respected Sunderland outfit fronted by the Brewis brothers, Peter and David, whose ravishing, swooping melodies rarely navigate the obvious route.
The brothers have yet to drop the ball across any of their albums to date. Open Here, their sixth, is another tasty invitation to luxuriate in their soothing yet quirky prog pop, graced with their heavenly harmonies and, on this outing, hippie flute flourishes (from Admiral Fallow’s Sarah Hayes) and sumptuous string arrangements, courtesy of the Open Here string quartet.
Like Django Django, Field Music gracefully traverse time zones and musical cultures to create a
soundworld which harks back to the classic pop tunes of The Beatles and Beach Boys and their 70s proxies ELO and Genesis without ever sounding old-fashioned. Such is their skill as songwriters and arrangers that they can even dip into the slick 80s funk pop sounds once popularised by the likes of Nik
Kershaw or It Bites on Goodbye to the
Country and still hold their heads
high.
There’s no messing about from upbeat, infectious Edinburgh foursome The Spook School. Their third album Could It Be Different? builds on their happy marriage of DIY indie pop and gender politics in instantly lovable fashion, with sweet, sunny melodies and punky buzzsaw guitars galore, which occasionally harbour melancholic, ambivalent lyrics on some pretty dark matter.
Still Alive gives a very cheery, almost gleeful middle finger to an abusive relationship, Body breezily tackles body confidence (“I still hate my body but I’m willing to love what it can do”) and the band practise what they preach on inclusivity with universally appealing tracks such as I
Hope She Loves You.
Django Django are free to tinker and experiment to whatever level of sophistication they please