The Chakras - Build Me a Swan EP (self-released)
3/5
By: Alex Lee Thomson
A bundle of bands have to release their debut EPs under their own steam, but this isn't always because they're not musically there yet - The Chakras for one have personally made a here-we-are EP that wouldn't have disappointed had it come from the likes of Sigur Ros. 'Build Me A Swan' by these exciting new Irishmen is something of a landmark for the band, and has gained them pressing interest from the likes of the fellows at MySpace and a nation lurking in the background of modern indie waiting for the next generation of really talented bands to come forward.
The title tracks ambient 'Glosoli'-like harmony suspends into a contradictory jumble of instruments and vocals that conjure up shards of Zwan-shaped, hammering niceties. Their alternative pop holds itself back like a slower Arcade Fire song - or Animal Collective trying to figure itself out - and the candour of their music is brought forward from behind a barrier of smoke, slowly revealing itself, gently, sexily. Their control as a band lies in an unexplored ability to placate your whims for a modest and haunting sound while secretly hiding their grand ideas of total musical destruction. You can tell they're holding back, and although it starts to crawl through every now and again, they manage to stop just short of a full-blown spurt of force, remaining in total rule of each song throughout. A band with this much importance that you can sing a long to? It's so straightforward you'd think somebody else would have though of it.
This is an EP in the real sense of one, not designed to be a cheeky way to charge more for a single, but a proper 4 track mini-album with each track as important as its precursor. 'My Friend Yugoslavia' is a pounding orchestration with strings swamping the decks of the already competing vocals and immensely hybrid drums that form a mesmerising organization of tunes in your headphones. This whole compilation is a treat for all your senses, especially those extra ones that Stephen Fry told us about on QI, and although you can pick bits out and see the influence behind them the medley of sounds that The Chakras throw at you lifts them out of a barrel full of mediocrity and into the clouds of something near to brilliance.
You could listen to the vocals on 'Unborn Love' all day, even before the extraordinary drums take the sombre dark-Brit-pop anthem into a state of alert anarchy, ploughing a better-than-U2 riff along the dirt of a seething melody, ripped by the teeth of its own ornate majesty. It could be David Bowie if it weren't so dangerous and while the lyrics are poignant, the delivery is clean, mathematically clean and precise enough to not miss a single beat. Just when you think the songs about to lose it's meaning, something happens, something changes and you're catapulted back into the adventure that The Chakras' music instigates.
The finale to this baby epic is a song that quite frankly would blow the bollocks right of Win Butler if he ever dared to listen to it. The incredible shock that this band is unsigned, at least for the next 5 minutes, comes home with this song as it rides around like a stallion, raging against the dying of some unseen light and fighting to exist. Again, you don't know what's going to happen next and you forget the melody of this song as quickly as you fall in love with it, as although it's catchy as hell, it rattles around so much you forget what you're listening to and become involved with the next indulgent verse casting aside the last until you're left in utter puzzlement. With so many bands playing whatever the media tells them to, it takes bottle to be bold enough to take on the likes of band that The Chakras are motivated to compete with, and providentially it's paid off big time. This EP is a gigantic stampede of mind indulgence and challenges the rest of British music society to buck their ideas up. It's not all that of a new concept but it's the way that it's all been put together on independent release 'Build Me A Swan' that excels The Chakras into the realm of importance where it not just survives, but thrives, picking off musical delicacies from a smorgasbord of raw, unsullied talent like that ravenous fat bloke from Monty Python... consuming every morsel in its path until it explodes into the fire of noise that fell into this startlingly awesome debut release.
Stream the whole of the 'Build Me A Swan' EP HERE.
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