Record review

millefeuille.fr

21 Dec 2005

Future come and get me

[translated from French, thanks to Elie and Mark]

A short note included in the sleeve of the first album by the Irish band Stoat explains the long and difficult gestation of the album, the fruit of lots of work and patience through adversity. Realists, Stoat finish it with humility, saying "This is the sound of a group of people being themselves. We hope you like it". This humble attitude makes the album a pleasant surprise, the opposite of a mountain giving birth to a mouse*.

Even if we can't really classify, the band practice the good old vocals, bass, guitar and drums set up with, inevitably, the occaional intervention of keyboards, but with an energy and spread of ideas that makes listening generally good.

The first song, 59 Dame Street, built around a robust bass line, is an absurd war cry, a quasi spoken word monologue with electric guitar assaults leading to the stupid and enjoyable 'I wanna bomb the Central Bank' chorus. After this good start, Stoat reiterate several times this initial formula: rather catchy melodies, two or three judicious ideas in the instrumentation and there you go. Some very efficient songs emerge from this: The Saltee Tango, a sea shanty with a military march intro and sudden rhythmic accelerations; the very Pixies Acunamanacana, short and efficient flaming punk sung in an indeterminate language; and also Periscope Down, which starts musically (Richards style riff) and textually (Sticky fingers in my hair) like the Stones, before moving to a more pop chorus with vocal harmonies and keyboards.

The album then starts to fall asleep a little until the 11th song Oh Happy Day, a happy mix of They Might Be Giants and The Decemberists that is so rousing that you can forgive lines like "The drugs begin to sing beneath my skin" (what?). We hesitate to qualify "Future Come And Get Me" as a festive** album because of the sinister associations this word can provoke, but the fact is that as thin as its pretentions are, this album will easily cheer up a bad morning.

* Obviously a literal translation of a French saying, it means making a big deal of something small, so the album is the opposite of this

** In France they have the term 'festive music' which means it's fun and you can dance to it. It can mean The Pogues but it can also mean The Birdie Song - that's what he means by 'sinister associations'.

[Original text (in French) can be found at http://www.millefeuille.fr/]