My Device - Jumbo Fiasco (Shifty Disco)
4/5
By: Alex Lee Thomson
Whenever a new Shifty Disco CD comes through the door you can almost hear the clatter of your doormat fighting with the brilliance contained within, and Jumbo Fiasco is by no means an exception. When this flew through our letterbox we had to call in specially trained officials to place it skilfully into our CD player where it would remain on repeat for several hours until said professionals could return. Why then is this record so prominent? When most bands get tired of the average sound of music they re-write the rule book, or simply throw it away, but what My Device seem to have done is read it upside-down and backwards as all the reason is prominent though completely unfathomable. The songs for instance, cut down into bite-sized breakfast ready segments, are all wonderfully constructed, but put together send your brainwaves in twirls of mystification. They're all effortlessly catchy, up-beat and ear friendly, but when the jigsaw has been put together something's gone wrong in the best of ways.
'Fixxa Uppa' for instance, which hurtles recklessly into 'Rusty Trombone', has as much reliance on conventional song structures and ideals as The White Stripes do in their music (i.e. loads when it suits them, none when it doesn't). My Device's mix and match attack of genres within a few minutes long melody is as scary as it is uplifting, the unnerving lack of control within each meandering tune essential in their master plan of common-killing rock.
There's the great British eccentricity on this album too which helped Brakes be so inspirational to the right crowd, but on 'Jumbo Fiasco' My Device have taken that uncomplicated idea and turned what are in essence straight forward, well written songs, and beaten them with a rhythm stick until only a few unrecognisable splinters of musicality remained. If it wanted to, this album could be as standard as it needed to be to sell a gazillion copies, but you get the idea that notion wouldn't have appeased it's makers who have the ability to put almost any style into action, many songs here combining numerous genres within the walls of one ballad.
Yes, the fact that you can't really tell where one song ends and the other begins might be at the heart of the brilliance of the band and their music, but as a listener it can be wearisome, forcing you to listen to the whole album as a piece of music which in this day and age is by no means a bad idea, just rather a bothersome one.
But otherwise, this album is a fantastically crafted piece of work, even if at times it pushes too much into uncharted territory without cause which leaves the true gems present unnoticed. As bottomless as it all is though, we can't stress enough how magnetically inspiring it is to hear and has more than an inkling of future legendary status, though it's going to take the effort of its listeners to give it chance to level out on their pallet. It'll be worth it in the end kids, anything this unfathomable is always worth the patience.
Stream four tracks from 'Jumbo Fiasco' HERE.
Artists in this article: My Device
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