Nick Hoad

With a band name and album title like those, I was firmly convinced I’d be in for another ride like Metallica or Back In Black. So when the opening two tracks turned out to be driven by acoustic guitars and a sampled drum loop respectively, it came as a surprise. I had no idea what to expect from the rest of the album. The first track, Movin’ On Up, is fairly unremarkable in its instrumentation and musical content, and I forgot most of it less than ten minutes later. The second track, Slip Inside This House, is a bizarre fusion of Beatles-ish looped sitar, 90s drum samples and vocals so low in the mix the lyrics are rendered unintelligible. Don’t Fight It, Feel It, the following track, is an interminably repetitive dance loop. It’s by no means the worst of the endless dreary nightmares I’ve endured on this list, and it gets a lot of bonus points by mixing up what it puts on top of the short section of music which plays again and again for nearly seven minutes, but it still got quite old before the end.

What I can say in this album’s favour so far is that each track is distinct from the others, while maintaining a cohesive overall style. Higher Than The Sun stands out from the crowd even more by including some glitchy, choppy bass lines and synths which happen to appeal to me, all without overstaying its welcome. Come Together on the other hand, is ten minutes long, and while it never reaches the point of unbearable sameyness, it does contain a grating, irritating, whining sawtooth synth, which seems to be trying to imitate a territorial peacock. If that aspect were removed I think I’d rather enjoy the whole track, as the rest of it forms a pleasing groove which ebbs and flows and builds on itself nicely, if for a couple of minutes too long.

I’m going to show my age again when I reveal that I have no idea what the quote dispersed throughout Loaded is actually from*, associating it more with the Edgar Wright film The World’s End. The track itself seemed as though it was going to save itself from monotony during the promising breakdown halfway through, but then returned to much the same kind of thing as it had already been doing for three minutes, for another long three minutes, capped off by a strangely abrupt ending. This track was followed by the entirely incongruous Damaged which seems like it has absolutely no place among the other songs on the album. It felt more like something Ed Sheeran might have written than anything that came before it.

The second version of Higher Than The Sun is billed as “a dub symphony in two parts”, each of which turned out to be as boring as the other, and far inferior to the first one. What’s particularly frustrating about this is that Screamadelica has already proven it knows how to craft long tracks which change enough within themselves to avoid becoming torturously dull, but just… doesn’t here for some reason. The final track, Shine Like Stars, features the sounds of an accordion and the sea, which is an interesting combination with the old tinny drum machines and twinkling instruments I couldn’t identify that float around. Again, this is barely in keeping with the rest of the album, bearing most similarity to Damaged, but only by process of elimination.

Screamadelica is a strange beast, teeming with unusual combinations of instruments, tracks that distance themselves from each other as much as possible, and ideas that don’t get pushed far enough. I like the production values and overall style; they evoke the decade or so before I was born, a parallel universe which bears many similarities to what I grew up with. I couldn’t articulate why I enjoy that sort of thing, but I certainly do. The album shoots itself in the foot a few too many times though, stretching out material far beyond its capacity to hold my interest and rarely building to anything quite enough for me.

Favourite Song: Higher than the Sun

Next Time: Arcade Fire – Funeral

*I googled it, it’s from The Wild Angels, which came out in 1966 and stars Peter Fonda.