Artist: Duels
Label: Nude Records
Released: 2006
Rating: 3.5/5
Duels are a young English band that earned a reputation very early in their career. They never exactly topped the charts, but they earned that much more respect from the critics. The album The Bright Lights And What I Should Have Learned is their debut and already shows how talented the band is, even while they were still finding their feet. Since then they’ve put out one more album, called The Barbarians Move In.
When I got the CD for review, I was expecting a pretty typical British pop rock record, but right from the start I got a slap in the face and a lesson: never jump to conclusions too early, and definitely not before you’ve heard the album. First off, I was surprised by the heavy use of the mellotron, which admittedly has been showing up in popular music quite a bit lately (Oasis, for example), but not like this. With the mellotron, Duels build that authentic sonic backdrop we got to hear so often in the seventies. The gentle mellotron gets even bigger next to a gritty guitar with a pretty typical Britpop sound.
Duels are a band of contrasts. On one hand, they can play totally ordinary British pop, and not even very convincing at that; on the other, they can really impress with the more psychedelic stretches, where the mellotron flows beautifully in the background. But if you get too used to the beauty, it can knock you flat pretty quickly when the singer steps up to the mic with a typical Britpop vocal (annoying and at times sung straight through the nose). Either way, those contrasts work in their favor. All these variations and combinations are effective, and in the end they add up to a really successful hybrid of British pop and psychedelic music.
Two names of massive worldwide fame come up most often among Duels’ influences. Namely, Pink Floyd and David Bowie. With Floyd, at most you could say you can spot a bit of influence from the early days with Syd Barrett in the band, and even that’s debatable; with Bowie the similarities are a little bigger, though Bowie’s style was smarter and more all-encompassing.
Duels are solid musicians, but nothing more than that. They play as well as they need to. They know how to turn their limitations to their advantage. They make music that feels real and not too artificial, and I think that’s what matters most. The guitar is up front, pretty rough, but adding an acoustic one fixes the impression. The keyboards matter too, led by the old-school mellotron, and the keyboardist doesn’t skimp on the other sounds either (some of the piano parts especially are really beautiful). The rhythm section is strong and gives a good foundation, while the vocals are what you’d expect from the English – at first they seem annoying, but once you get used to them, you might even fall in love with them.
There’s not much to fault Duels for. They’ve made a record you don’t hear every day. At first glance, mixing British pop rock with psychedelia seems a bit odd and baffling, but it works. The album flows nicely, the music eventually lodges itself in your memory, and you can calmly say the experience was definitely a satisfying one.
Lineup
Jon – vocals
Jim – guitar
Katherine – keyboards
Jon – bass
James – drums
Production
James Ford
Track list
1. Brothers & Sisters
2. Things
3. Potential Futures
4. The Slow Build
5. The Monsters Are Loose
6. Animal
7. What We Did Wrong
8. Pressure on You
9. Young Believers
10. Once in the Night
11. Taxi Song
