Animal magic
Faith Eliott’s debut is filled with sophisticated songs, while the return of Bananarama is all breezy pop
POP
Faith Eliott: Impossible Bodies
OK Pal Bananarama: In Stereo
In Synk Fat White Family: Serfs Up!
Domino Leafcutter John: Yes! Come Parade With Us
Border Community
Singular songwriter Faith
Eliott might appear to have landed fully formed with idiosyncratic debut album
Impossible Bodies but 15 years of writing and reckoning have led to this point, as well as a childhood relocation from Minneapolis to the UK and a welcoming apprenticeship on Edinburgh’s open mic scene.
There is a simplicity and directness in Eliott’s writing and a sparseness and intimacy in the delivery. However, these are not entry-level songs but a sophisticated suite of charming, bittersweet creature features, influenced by the medieval bestiaries which sought to document the animal kingdom with the partial knowledge available at the time.
So every song on Impossible Bodies is ostensibly about a different animal – and, at heart, about Eliott, who has not chosen the title lightly, but uses the concept to explore their own grapple with gender identity (Eliott uses the gender-neutral pronouns they, them, their).
Carl Sagan Cosmos Song
contemplates Eliott’s small place in the history of the universe, survival as struggle and the desire for transformation. Grouper captures the otherworldly, hypnotic environment of an aquarium with Leonard Cohenesque undulating guitar, while
the sonorous blues of Lilith – named after Adam’s first wife who returns to the Garden of Eden as a snake to tempt Eve – finds Eliott toying with the temptation to liberate the reptiles from a petting zoo.
Modest arrangements on acoustic guitar contrast with the twinkling orchestration of Loomis and the whole spellbinding affair invites comparison with the gothic folkloric laments of Laura Marling or PJ Harvey’s ethereal evocation of her native Dorset landscape on White
Chalk.
Pop escapism of a more generic, processed nature is on offer from
Bananarama’s first album in ten years. Following their brief live reunion with Siobhan Fahey, Keren Woodward and Sara Dallin return to life as a down-to-earth dancepop duo, raising a smile with the seemingly self-aware declaration that “sometimes we’re just dancing out of time” on opening track Love In Stereo.
This slick Richard X-produced disco-pop number was originally intended for the reunited original Sugababes, Mutya, Keisha and Siobhan, and is the only track on the album not co-written by Dallin and Woodward with producer Ian Masterson.
They aim for familiar Kylie territory on pseudo-sultry club track Dance
Music, and decent production hooks compensate for the lack of defining personality on the breezy candyfloss likes of Got To Get Away and the instant earworm Stuff Like That.
Cult renegades Fat White Family have swapped Brixton squatland for the Steel City, and a roar for a purr, on their third album, as feral frontman Lias Saoudi reins in his wildman tendencies to deliver the lean funk prowl of Feet, embellished with a flourish of disco strings. His creepy soft croon is offset with soft siren backing vocals on Vagina Dentata and he is joined by fellow suave seducer Baxter Dury for the downer glam rock of Tastes Good with the
Money, which is what passes for a rallying stomper in this understated company.
There are periodic shafts of light, not least the quavery strings, breathy, romantic croon, plangent guitar and faint reggae rhythm of Rock Fishes, which could give labelmates Arctic Monkeys a run for their money in their current cosmic lounge band incarnation. But despite the eclectic mix of styles throughout, Serfs Up! is a little too muted to cherish.
On Yes! Come Parade With Us ,DIY electronics maestro Leafcutter John combines the capabilities of his homemade modular synthesizer with field recordings collected as he walked the Norfolk Coast Path, from the inexorable tide of the North Sea and the overlapping caw of sea birds to the more abstract drones of Elephant Bones, jungle -like twittersphere of Stepper Motor and windswept throb of Dunes.
“There is a simplicity and directness in Eliott’s writing and a sparseness and intimacy in the delivery”