The Siegfried Sassoon - Muscle Beach / The Al Gore Rhythm (Natural History)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
I had some cool things when I was a kid. I had a tape with Thriller on one side and Bad on the other, a Lego pirate ship, and a family who loved me. Then I got a guitar when I was about 12, and instantly could not have cared less about any of it. To this day, I remain a bad man.
The Siegfried Sassoon had some cool things when they were kids - science fiction movies on VHS, Game Boys, families who loved them. Then they got guitars, and unlike me, used those cool things to inform the songs they wrote on them rather than deeming them suddenly valueless. Theirs is a dedication to the inherent and unchanging worth in things that amaze you when you're young that should be very much admired.
But despite its admiration of such eye-opening pieces of pop culture, it's neither simplistic nor retro music in any sense - the musicianship is as tight as the melodies are inventive, and across both tracks here, these are very inventive melodies. Do you see? This is intricate and studied music played with an abandon that suggests The Siegfried Sassoon have never had more fun, and actually dread the end of the track, when they have to take off the spaceman's helmet and return to their real lives. It's an admittance, a celebration indeed, that melodies can be both catchy and totally weird.
Of the two tracks on this AA side release, it's the Game Boy symphonics and we're-all-in-this-together vibe of 'Muscle Beach' that tickles me most pink. There's something about a riff that seems to change every time and yet can still only be described as incessant... music that makes me write seemingly contradictory sentences basically, that's my bag. Yet its sister song, 'The Al Gore Rhythm', itself contains a few things that make me grin inanely - a killer melody, a vocoder, and a beautiful lady (namely Laura-Mary Carter off'a Blood Red Shoes). And the title is a pun. I f*cking love puns.
The former track excites in virtue of its restlessness, the latter triumphs playing with a calmer but no less forceful hand. Both unveil a band as dedicated to finding the most complicated riff as they are the world's best singalong chorus. Their ambition, and success in such a quest - both should be roundly applauded.
Artists in this article: The Siegfried Sassoon
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