Electrelane - No Shouts No Calls (Too Pure)
4/5
By: Kevin Molloy
What kind of a band are Electrelane? First album: instrumental, second album: welsh chorus choirs, third: noise and squall. And now? This is, maybe, their rock album. All the elements for an arms-aloft rollick are present, but it feels like they've placed delicate items of personal value on top of the amps and crash cymbals. They're playing the same songs, but on their tiptoes. The bass chunders away beneath the mix, and guitars bubble up to the surface. They're all perfectly distinct: this water is crystal clear, not murky... it's a shout from the other side of a sonic valley.
Outing the fourth for Electrelane is not what we expected, then. And at first we're a little nonplussed... if they're not going to rock out, what are they going to do? But it only serves to make the moments of release (e.g. 'After the Call') all the more startling: even in their restraint, Electrelane can smash pictures of happy relationships against the floor to show the cracks.
There are moments of wonderful lyrical introspection to boot ('In Berlin' is a despairingly lovelorn example), but lest we take anything so flimsy as words too seriously, they're oft qualified by songs like 'Tram 21', a gorgeous song driven by a twee organ line, and populated by the repeated, harmonised iteration of 'ahhhhh'. Such repetitions are important on this album. Insistent patterns on the keys or guitar are transformed only by the bass line progressing beneath them... the same two notes are often played for the whole song, with little other than the vocals and associated melody changing.
And then 'Between the Wolf and the Dog's riff is something else again - 70s hair metal, to be honest... unashamed primitive distortion for distortion's sake and repeated runs up and down the line. It's a bit odd, but the bass gives away the game, as it starts to meld synth-like into the song. Out of nowhere a cutesy "ooh, ooh, ahh" vocal cuts in, via a convenient timewarp to a line of 60s backing vocalists. It cuts in like the radio in Joni Mitchell's 'This Flight Tonight', and just as expertly.
Yes, we are aware that we just compared one song to three entirely different genres and decades of music. Believe it or not, it's not an intentional journalistic angle... Electrelane really screw about with pigeon holing. The only useful pointer you can really take is, "this is an Electrelane record". And it does sound just like Electrelane. Whatever that means. For me? This record is bloody marvellous... it's playful and yet sincere, it's rocking and lovelorn, and all of its many, many contradictions prove only to be fruitful, and never destructive. Except for perhaps commercial viability. We'll let them off that hook quite happily for an album this wonderful.
Stream 'To The East' from 'No Shouts No Calls' HERE.
Artists in this article: Electrelane
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