The Earlies - 'These Were...' (WEA)
5/5
By: Toby L
The Earlies: rated, commended, lauded as one of the UK's most overpowering, intriguing, and downright inventive discoveries of modern times.
Pah. Who are we to refute such claims? Their debut LP, 'These Were...' - a compilation of their low-key EPs to date - is a multifarious, ensconcing and rewarding listen; much in the same vein as Broken Social Scene's criminally neglected 'You Forgot It In People', their sound isn't prejudiced: if a pop song is void of an unconventional instrument - say, a clarinet - then bloody well get it on there. As such, compositions hover, simmer, shimmer and gravitate with spatial warmth and knowing abandon. The horizons to which The Earlies head, are glowing, joyous and brighter than the ones we frequent presently. We must join them.
So, that we do, from the opening stoner electro of 'In The Beginning', through to the classically perfect 'Slow Man's Dream' - as warming and sincere as anything that soundtracked 'Kes'. Then on in, there's the piano rattle of '25 Easy Pieces', like Mercury Rev on valium, or Spiritualized on acid, and the boundaries are shifted yet again. Never before has a listen in 2004 been so exasperatingly impossible to pinpoint, yet rewarding upon its full unveiling.
The second half of the outing, likewise, doesn't put a proverbial foot wrong: 'Morning Wonder' is just that - a subtle, sultry electro waltz with uplifting, Lemon Jelly-like harmonics; 'The Devil's Country' bears dark, foraging percussive loops and distant, echoing sirens; 'Song For #3' opens in a bastion of silence, before a solo voice and keys descend into the wistful, again proverbial, skies above; and 'Dead Birds' does precisely what the latter offers, only with a knobs-on crescendo of looming woodwind, strings and choirs to boot. Bloody hell; The Polyphonic Spree have at last met their match.
Like most of the perplexing wonder in life, it's via the little things that The Earlies transpire into something quite so extraordinary. 'These Were The Earlies'? Yes, and we long for the day that loyal thousands fawn and flock in the outfit's presence, knees on ground, arms in air, in holy gratitude. 'Those are The Earlies.' That day shan't take too long to arrive.
Artists in this article: The Earlies
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