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This London group is one of those rare outfits that's defies easy genre-tag and categorizations. There are many times on Troubled, Shaken Etc. when they sound like a post-rock outfit, but there's just as many moments where they use jazzy flourishes, Krautrock repetition, atmospheric trip-hop and shoegazey guitarwork to push their songs along. Although the style may be had to pin down, the mood of their songs is not - they are consistently downbeat and somewhat detached and academic, creating an inpenatrable veneer that is hard to warm up to. Lead singer Sian Ahern, has a pretty voice but they (like some of the other instruments) are somewhat muddily recorded, leaving her lyrics all but impossible to decipher - something like Portishead's Beth Gibbons singing into a far away microphone. The Portishead comparison goes even further, with several of the songs sounding like demos for last year's Third, causing me to think "Interesting song...too bad they couldn't get Portishead to record it". They do however get it completely right on one song, "Close To The Ground" - a 7 and a half minute number with a crystal clear vocal, an insistently thumping drumbeat and a sinister groove that gets indelibly etched on your brain. If they had an album filled with songs as stunning as this one, they'd be walking in rarefied air, but they're not there just yet.
DAVID MANSDORF
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