The British oddball teenagers put their freaky spin on pop with some oddly mixed results.
Let’s Eat Grandma / I, Gemini
While it is offbeat, there is also something wonderfully punky and nihilistic about the name Let’s Eat Grandma, the pairing of two multi-instrumentalist teenage girls hailing from Norwich, England. Long-time buddies Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton have been making what they refer to as “psychedelic sludge-pop” since they were 13. Like the name of their band, the girls’ live performances often lean towards bizarre and provocative, usually involving stage antics and childlike mannerisms — the combined aesthetic that scored them a record deal with indie label Transgressive.
Let’s Eat Grandma’s debut studio LP I, Gemini is a collection of 10 peculiar pop tracks that seems to draw eccentric influences from their predecessors such as Cocteau Twins, CocoRosie and probably The Knife. However, unlike those artists, their self-styled quirkiness is meant as something of a comedic device. (Hollingworth commented in one of the interviews that “the whole album is almost taking the piss out of popular music” and that “so many things in it are just hilarious”).
Opener and lead single Deep Six Textbook is far from hilarious, though. Utterly eerie and atmospheric, the trip-hop-inspired cut contains outlandish lines sung in entrancing vocals such as “Let’s eat grandma in full colour” and “I bought the starfish one day/ Why would we be so stressed?” Frankly, a glockenspiel solo has never sounded so sinister.
Eat Shiitake Mushrooms follows suit with even more dreamlike glockenspiel and a bewildering blend of hip-hop and electronica elements. Underpinned by a blare of saxophone, Sax in the City is exactly what the title suggests. Chocolate Sludge Cake, on the other hand, is evocative of vintage pastoral English folk, featuring a two-and-a-half-minute recorder solo as the girls sing about baking different kinds of cake.
Rapunzel recalls an old nursery rhyme with twinkling piano coupled with a twisted narrative: “My cat is dead, my father hit me/ I ran away, I’m really hungry.” Welcome To The Treehouse Part I and Welcome To The Treehouse Part II couldn’t be more different — the former is a loose, introspective cut whereas the latter is anything but. The album concludes with Uke 6 Textbook, a stripped-down version of Deep Six Textbook with just their voices and ukulele. After all that dense and heady mix of sounds and ideas, the song is indeed a welcome relief.
Hollingworth might have said that many elements of this record are “hilarious” but we’re not so sure if that’s the right word. “Musically confounding” may be a more apt description of what’s going on with I, Gemini. There are moments of promising inventiveness that rebel against the norms of pop music, which is all well and good until that inventiveness is stretched so far it tethers on grating discordance. This is one of those albums you will have a hard time deciding whether to love or hate.
THE PLAYLIST
Brandnew Sunset/ Spaceship
A concept studio album six years in the making, Brandnew Sunset’s Of Space And Time sees the long-serving metal-punk quartet in a state of introspective contemplation as they explore themes of life, spiritual journeys, alternate realities and a dying mother. The latest single Spaceship is a solid heavy metal number built on punchy guitar riffs and tight arrangements. Lyrically, it talks about leaving behind this planet on a spacecraft to find a new one while posing a series of what, when, how and why questions to the creator of the old world — whoever that may be.
Preoccupations/ Degraded
Following their name change from the controversial Viet Cong to Preoccupations earlier this year, the Canadian post-punk quartet return with a self-titled new album. Here, we’re treated to Degraded, a second taste of the band’s forthcoming sophomore release after lead single Anxiety. A mix of snarling guitar riffs, moody synths and thunderous drums, the track finds frontman Matt Flegel announcing the impending doom of mankind in his signature nonchalant baritone: “We’re absolutely obsolete/ Intolerant and overheating/ Leaving our footprints in the concrete/ There’s nothing left here to compete for.”
Boredom/ Geometry
Boredom is a collaboration between James Cook from British synth-pop outfit Delphic and Melodic Records label manager Andy Moss. Here, the duo shares with us Geometry, their debut single that draws together a heady blend of influences from something as wonderfully obscure as “Polish disco” to something as impressively precise as “1980s Japanese re-releases or Paradise Garage mixes”. Oscillating synths, a drum machine and cow bells kick off the musical proceedings, ushering in Cook’s vocals which sit nicely between a state of flippancy and half-hearted enthusiasm.
Roosevelt/ Fever
Since the release of his 2013 EP Elliot, German producer Roosevelt has been working hard to perfect his unique brand of throwback ’80s new wave and electro-pop, the sound that manifests itself in his new singles such as Colours and Moving On. Lifted from his self-titled debut LP, latest offering Fever has all the makings of a nostalgia-inducing pop jam — sun-drenched grooves, wistful synth loops, funky guitar lines and tom drum rolls. “Get back to where we started out/ Far away up in the sky,” he sings. “Bring back the fever again/ Don’t lose the fever again.” Is this the sound of the summer? We’d like to think so.
Glass Animals/ Youth
Oxford-based indie-pop outfit Glass Animals keep things positively offbeat on their latest offering Youth, the second cut taken from their sophomore full-length How To Be A Human Being. Much like lead single Life Itself before it, the track comes packed with eccentric tribal rhythms and summery vibes underpinned by a nagging sense of melancholy. In his hazy-slash-sultry falsetto, vocalist Dave Bayley croons “Fly, feel your mother at your side/ Don’t you know you got my eyes/ I’ll make you fly/ You’ll be happy all the time/ I know you can make it right.” Youth is as weird as it is wistful.
This source first appeared on Bangkok Post Lifestyle.