Artist: Late Of The Pier
Label: Parlophone Records
Release: 2008
Runtime: 00:42:06
Rating: 3.5/5
Picture a musical cocktail whose main ingredients are Gary Numan, Brian Eno, Frank Zappa, Stephen Dubrich, Bill Nelson, Metronomy and Klaxons. And if we spice it up with some heavy use of electric keyboards and a sound like a busted barrel organ, we get the English electro/glam/trash outfit Late of The Pier. With their very first single, “Space And The Woods”, released in March 2007, the lads announced that a different era was coming for a hopelessly oversaturated music industry flooded with one “instant” “boy” band after another. Quality, hiding behind an unusual name.
The four teenagers were taken under the wing of the German label Parlophone records, and so their debut album “Fantasy Black Channel” saw the light of day on August 11 this year. The newborn kicks off with the instrumental “Hot Tent Blues”, which cuts sharply through your ear with a late-seventies guitar sound. If the sawing guitars at the start seem at odds with the title, after a minute of listening it finally turns out there’s a bit of blues in this one minute and sixteen second track after all. That carries over into the second track, “Broken”, where Samuel Dust finally opens his mouth. The line “Didn`t sleep last night, couldn`t come down” probably sounds all too familiar to everyone. The monotony we witness at the start is broken up by an excellent guitar solo. The track ends with some so-called “scratching”, which flows almost without a break into the much more bouncy, aforementioned first single “Space And The Woods”, which is all about searching for yourselves. Whether the lads found themselves or not, you can decide for yourself. “The Bears Are Coming” is the third single released from the record and surely one of the instrumentally more interesting tracks. It’s spiced up by African percussion, which is more intense at the start and slowly fades out toward the end. Somewhere in the middle the “scratching” shows up again, and from it we slip for a moment into a drunken knees-up, like the one the lower-class passengers staged below deck in the movie Titanic. Dancing, singing and banging on beer mugs. And to finish, blasting a shotgun and smashing glasses. Kind of a standard scene from American movies. Sound familiar? Borrowing lines from other artists’ songs is clearly in fashion, too. If Kid Rock started the trend with his so-called hit of the summer “All Summer Long”, Late Of The Pier are obviously carrying it on. While listening to the track we run into a surprising detail from the legendary “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” by the even more legendary Pink Floyd, only LOTP have turned it into a slightly darker “Shine on your nightmare, shine through the tears”. The party continues in “Random Firl”, only here it shows up in a different form. Picture a jumpy man sitting at a table, persistently and constantly banging a spoon on it, while the kids in their play corner are pressing squeaky, shrieking toys. Chaos nobody wants. The wife, or rather mother, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, ends up “in tha closet” to get away from it all.
Right at the halfway point of the album, it’s not just your feet that jump but your heart too. “Heartbeat” won’t keep anyone in their seat. On top of that, it somehow feels like we’ve heard it before. A fresh breeze blows in with “Whitesnake”. An excellent track enriched with glam-punk feels like the exact opposite of everything mentioned so far. As they say – “oldies goldies”. What “VW” has in common with the car giant is anything but clear. What the almost entirely instrumental track, with a touch of horror creeping in toward the end, does have is a perfectly clear message: “Garbage! Can you smell socks?”. The clearest message of all the lyrics on the album, “I wanna be your friend”, comes in “Focker”, where Samuel returns with his distorted voice. If we were talking about shotguns and the like earlier, for the finale the lads reached for electric grinders. Not literally, but interesting all the same. More than any other song on the album, “The Enemy Are The Future” stands out. The slightly controversial title delivers music based more on percussion and drums. Of course, we can’t skip the vocals, which range from a voice reminiscent of Mickey to the kind Jim Morrison used to seduce the crowds back in his day.
The record is closed out by “Mad Dogs And Englishman” with its slightly repetitive rhythm, and “Bathroom Gurgle”. The latter was the second single released, which definitely helped boost LOTP’s profile. Despite the numerous covers the track has already seen, the original version still sounds best. When the record finishes spinning, don’t take it out of the player just yet. It also has a hidden and slightly creepy track, “No time”, which is the exact opposite of everything you’ve heard before.
With their unique, progressive and innovative music, Late Of The Pier have offered something different. Something neither critics nor listeners are used to. So some are hailing the album as stellar, while others find their music nonsensical. Still, one thing holds true – a system crash has never been so much fun.
Lineup
Samuel Dust (vocals, strumming, “scratching”)
Francis Dance (strumming, shaking shelves)
Red Dog Consuela (smashing drums)
Jack Paradise (“chaos pad”)
Production
Erol Alkan
Tracklist
1. Hot Tent Blues
2. Broken
3. Space And The Woods
4. The Bears Are Coming
5. Random Firl
6. Heartbeat
7. Whitesnake
8. VW
9. Focker
10. The Enemy Are The Future
11. Mad Dogs And Englishman
12. Bathroom Gurgle
+ “hidden” No Time
