CREEP SHOW Mr Dynamite BELLA UNION 7/10

John Grant joins synth-pop mavericks Wrangler for a freewheeling collaboration. By Stephen Dalton

A joint project between sardonic songsmith john Grant and analogue synth trio Wrangler, Creep Show may seem an unlikely left-field supergroup on paper, but their musical trajectories have been increasingly convergent in recent years. Grant’s last two albums featured his most heavily electronic material to date, and he has frequently cited Wrangler member Stephen Mallinder’s early work with Sheffield subversives Cabaret Voltaire as a formative influence.

For their part, Wrangler have always combined electronic textures with more traditional songwriting elements, notably Mallinder’s heavily processed vocals and scrambled narrative lyrics. A studio collaboration has looked likely since an embryonic version of Creep Show first performed together at the Rough trade label’s 40th birthday festivities in 2016. Grant is also working with Wrangler producer and retro-synth collector Ben “Benge” Edwards on his next solo album.

Comprised of Mallinder, Edwards and Phil Winter of folktronica group tunng, Wrangler began as a left-field studio experiment grounded in the purist conceit of using a single vintage machine to compose each discrete track. But their two albums to date have exploded that dogmatic concept to embrace multi-layered production, guest collaborators and increasingly funky grooves, with mostly excellent results. in spirit, Mr Dynamite could almost have been the third Wrangler album, except that Grant is a full creative partner rather than a transient guest, his mordant wit and rich vocal timbre hardwired into the project’s musical DnA.

Unsurprisingly, there is a broader stylistic spectrum on Mr Dynamite than on a typical Wrangler or Grant solo album. But there is also an extra level of playfulness, a sense of old friends coming together to relax the rules and try out everything in the musical toy box. that mischievous liberationist spirit is certainly present on the title track, a rubberlimbed electro workout full of spooky Radiophonic synth shudders, shapeshifting jekyll-and-Hyde vocals, chunky breakbeats and cartoonish menace. this is party music, but with an impish, clammy, slightly unnerving idea of fun.

this comic-horror levity is still evident but more submerged on “K Mart johnny”, a desiccated sci-fi funk jam drenched in reverb and echo, all wrapped around a

nostalgic monologue about a toy dinosaur in which the words have been pitchshifted, filtered and squelched to the brink of abstract vocalese mulch. Propulsive, kinetic and buzzing with paranoid otherness, this is a fantastic exercise in sense-mangling sonic collage. it is also, perhaps not coincidentally, the closest thing on the album to a vintage Cabaret Voltaire track.

Grant’s luxuriant, crooning voice may not be central to Creep Show’s retrofuturistic robo-pop aesthetic, but it serves as a potent ingredient on two stand-out numbers. on the lavishly crafted ballad “Endangered Species”, in sepia-tinted tones that border on arch Rat Pack parody at times, Grant’s haughty narrator lays down a velvet gauntlet of veiled threats to a shadowy figure who may be a transgressive ex-lover or treacherous friend: “You’ve used all your extensions,” he warns sternly, “it’s time for physical and spiritual detention.”

Behind its lush layers of textural detail, “Endangered Species” is typically Grantian in its mordant wit and acerbic tone. But he switches register strikingly for the majestic album finale “Safe And Sound”, a rhapsodic romantic reverie with a surprising lack of bitter aftertaste. “Billions of stars across oceans of time,” he sighs over a twinkly soultronic backdrop, “I’m safe and sound in the arms

of my destiny.” this sumptuous serenade may well be Grant’s most hopeful, unambiguous love song to date.

if Mr Dynamite has a structural flaw, it sometimes feels more like a mixtape patchwork than a coherent body of work. the genre-hopping mood also strays into throwaway pastiche with flimsy beatbox chatter-funk sketches like “Lime Ricky”.

that said, there are sublimely nostalgic flavours here too. “tokyo Metro” is a gleaming lonely-robot lullaby of bleeps and bloops, processed japanese vocals and Pachinko-arcade neon brightness.

the cinematic synth symphony “Fall” is quietly mesmerising too, seven beatific minutes of weightless Krautronic undulations and fragmentary vocal whispers set adrift in memory bliss.

Even if Mr Dynamite sometimes feels like a light-hearted sideshow to more established musical careers, these moments of transcendence make the detour well worthwhile.