Labels: Funny / Not Funny
Review by: Andy Malcolm
This is a solid seven inch featuring a twiddly, mathy indie / emo jam and a band that doesn’t sound like that.
Twiddly mathy stuff is not normally my bag, but the Alphabet square that off by going down the Braid route in places, thereby ensuring there is enough melody packed in here to make it enjoyable. I particularly enjoy the big thumping chimes that come out of the gate, it’d have been nice to have less of the meandering guitar and more of the rawness as it would have reminded me of Lumber if it did, with guitars clashing with hefty bass and emphatically smashed cymbals. The vocals are high pitched and youthful as befits the genre. I just have a bit of trouble getting past that guitar going “twiddle twiddle twiddle”, as the other parts are fantastic. I liked the lyric “And when you’re not working, you’re drinking” (I think that’s what it was).
Invislbe Hand is sort of electronica / indie, with some folk hints in there. It really reminds me of something that I can’t quite put my finger on. It goes for the trick of layering on tonnes of sounds without you ever being allowed to get a handle on them. So in the foreground you have warm, drifting vocals, and a strummed guitar. Blurred into that you have some electronic noises, an out of tune radio, some distant bass thumps and it all comes together to create something very nice. WAIT. This sounds like when Joan of Arc were good circa “A Portable Model Of” / “How Memory Works”, just with nicer vocals. I really like this kind of music, especially on a night as wet and miserable as this one.