Some might consider this jumping the gun just a little but, with Hidden, TNP make an early bid for album of 2010. I don't want to renounce my previous life, sell all my worldly possessions and follow these guys around the world or anything but it's a close call. This music is so unlike anything else being made that it may as well have been beamed in from a parallel dimension.
In approach, if not overall aesthetic, it does bring to mind Construction Time Again era Depeche Mode, with it's incorporation of sampled sounds. At various times one hears chains, swords being drawn from scabbards and, reportedly, an elaborate set up featuring a hammer, cream crackers and a watermelon simulating the sound of a skull being crushed. Three Thousand also sports the same kind of terrifying drone in the background that the alien tripods made in the Spielberg remake of War of the Worlds. The guitars that dominated their superlative debut Beat Pyramid are all but absent. Along with the aforementioned samples, the songs are constructed from an enormous range of drums and percussive instruments, keyboards, the sparingly use of a children's choir and such unlikely rock'n'roll equipment as clarinet, French horn, flugelhorn, trombone and tuba.
Hidden, although challenging, is also as catchy as swine flu. Seven minute plus lead single We Want War glides by like a track a fraction of its length and, like the album overall, sports an arsenal of unlikely hooks that lodge in your head and have you returning to it again and again.
Sure, it might be pretentious and sometimes over-reach in it's ambition but how refreshing is that in the current musical climate?
Play it loud.
While I'm at it, here's my belated list of the ten best from last year.
Wild Beasts- Two Dancers
Dirty Projectors- Bitte Orca
Patrick Wolf- The Bachelor
Handsome Furs- Face Control
Neko Case- Middle Cyclone
The Decemberists- The Hazards of Love
The Flaming Lips- Embryonic
The Church- Untitled #23
Sea Wolf- White Water White Bloom
Bad Veins- Bad Veins
And a special mention of Melbourne's St Helens with Heavy Profession.
No comments:
Post a Comment