Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Alt-j living The Dream ..after 10yrs
iIt’s a decade since they won the Mercury Music Prize and Ivor Novello award in the same year for debut An Awesome Wave. But rather than a kiss of death, as such early accolades can be for aspiring young bands, alt-j went on to become one of the most successful British bands of the millennium. Their first three albums sold gazillions and topped the charts and if new release The Dream is anything to go by it looks as if the trend will continue. It’s another fine collection, the work of a band who know exactly what they’re doing. Slow burners such as opener Bane, which builds from a strange medieval guitar riff into an even stranger chant before jumping into something else altogether trip hop perhaps? – gives way to laid back electronica on U&ME before Hard Drive Gold lifts the pace. But it is on the singles The Actor, surely a nod to Ultravox and Yazoo complete with octave-jumping blips and bleeps, and the emotionally charged Get Better that alt-j fully hit their stride again. Originally written by lead singer Joe Newman for his partner suffering from period pain, the latter was lent extra gravitas by the onset of the pandemic – to which bandmate Gus Unger-hamilton can testify. “When Joe first played it to me I didn’t just get a bit tearful,” he said. “I broke down. A big, big cry. A cry of the year.”
Like so many musicians, either by fluke by design, the last few years have offered fertile ground for the art of songwriting. At least some good has come of it.
Alt-j play Belfast’s Telegraph Building on May 25 (that’s Wednesday) and tickets are on sale from ticketmaster.ie.