It's funny what sticks in your mind, isn't it? For instance, your reviewer can still remember vividly his first meeting with I AM KLOOT'S singer/ songwriter Johnny Bramwell. Buoyed up by having recently enthused over the band's eponymous second album in print, your correspondent proudly announced he'd given the record a princely, but well-deserved 9/10. "Yeah?" shrugged an unimpressed Johnny, "why not 10?"
Fair point, really, bearing in mind said release would later top this writer's personal end of year poll (2003) for best album. Why not 10 indeed? Well, with hindsight I can only offer that I was reserving 10 for the next one, and it turns out I was right to hold back after all, for Kloot's third album (and I think we can legitimately say it's 'eagerly anticipated' at this juncture) is a magnificent record and one simply crying out for full marks.
Not that it's a radical departure from the Kloot of yore. It's still mostly grounded in the guitar/ bass/ drums format (though more keyboards do seep in) and once again presents the perfect backdrop for Bramwell's acerbic and pithy wordplay. But the standard of the band's intuitive ability to complement each other is second to none throughout, and - with Joe Robinson's production keeping things largely live and uncomplicated - "Gods & Monsters" presents a finely-honed portrait of a band at the peak of their powers who are doing wondrous things within the supposedly tired guitar pop format.
"Gods & Monsters" brims with confidence sonically. Opener "No Direction Home" is a dark and strident, almost Stones-y affair - and arguably more direct than the band have ever been - while recent Top 40 single "Over My Shoulder" remains a catchy and uncluttered set-piece that cruises coolly into your synapses. Both of these are assured and typically edgy and an effective flex of the muscles for what Kloot go on to achieve as the album unfolds.
Stylistically, the record veers between quintessential Kloot - provided by vivid, semi-acoustic tunes like "The Stars Look Familiar" and great, but offbeat pop like the deceptively immediate "Dead Mens' Cigarettes" (reminiscent of the previous record's "3 Ft Tall") - through to brooding, abrasive moments such as "An Ordinary Girl", the bloody and dramatic "Sand And Glue" and the last gasp defiance of "Coincidence" (opening lyric: "Love may just have come to bury me/ but I'm not afraid of what I see"), which could well be the darkest thing Kloot have ever committed to tape. It's all gripping, essential music and a timely reminder that albums were intended to be consumed as a entity rather than just to pull tracks for iPod fodder. Indeed, "Gods & Monsters" has been assembled very carefully, and the track listing is arranged to ensure the maximum impact from each song.
|
Sonically, too, all three members of the band get into the act and provide fine extracurricular touches. For instance, it's drummer Andy Hargreaves who plays the deliciously cheesy Hammer horror Wurlitzer organ on the quirkily brilliant title track, while bassist Peter Jobson stars on piano on arguably the album's showstopper "Avenue Of Hope": a dignified, but fatalistic ballad which is equal parts "A Fistful Of Dollars" and "St.James' Infirmary" in its' execution, and may well be the greatest song Kloot have recorded thus far.
For all the band's musical invention, though, it's Johnny Bramwell's lyrical dexterity and magnificent Mancunian drawl that ultimately seals the deal. This time out, most of his protagonists are searching for escape from life's "Gods & Monsters" (i.e religion, money, materialism), but often in the most unlikely of ways. The girl in "An Ordinary Girl" may come "from an ordinary house, in an ordinary world, from an ordinary town", but she has darker qualities ("she's mugging her lovers, she's bleeding the buggers") and takes refuge in witchcraft and the supernatural. Bramwell's lyrics are first rate, and this song is brilliantly realised. Indeed, with the possible exception of fellow Mancunian Vinny Peculiar, Johnny Bramwell is currently the finest working lyricist in the UK right now and he's melding a crossbreed of John Cooper Clarke and Ray Davies that's second to none.
There's much more, of course - not least the tender, unadorned acoustic track "Stray" and the brilliantly moving "I Believe" that takes us to the tape - but really the quality never lets up where "Gods & Monsters" is concerned. In the current vogue for all things brooding and serious, where Joy Division/ New Order are (once again) seen to be setting the blueprint and (yawn) Coldplay are about to be hailed as the returning prodigals, Kloot's spiky magnificence sounds like the most effective thorn in the side we could ask for right now. Their third album once again stands alone in its' originality, but - finally - it seems significant amounts of people are waiting to succumb out there. Not before time, neither.
So here's your perfect 10, Johnny. You've surely earned it this time, baby.
|
