Alt-J: This is All Yours (Infectious)

 |   |  <1 min read

Alt-J: Warm Foothills
Alt-J: This is All Yours (Infectious)

Much as I liked the debut album by this British outfit An Awesome Wave and said they seemed likely to be the Next Indie.Cult Thing to go bigger, I certainly had reservations about seeing them live.

Their music was so studio-crafted and often inward looking that I couldn't see how it would translate live. Well, I saw them and although I concede others liked them much better than I did , but I felt my reservations were right.

They are clever, and this album is more such refined cleverness . . . but it rarely has any traction or adhesiveness. It is one of those "Hmm that's nice" (the delicate Arrival in Nara/Nara) but "That's annoyingly oddball" (the silly aren't-we-quirky punkabilly stomp of Left hand Free) albums of separate parts.

Let's not go there on the lyrics either: "I'm gonna bed into you like a cat beds into a beanbag, turn you inside out and lick you like a crisp packet". That's from Every Other Freckle which borrows it's "Hey!" punctuations from the Lumineers.

The Gospel of John Hurt ("chest bursts like John Hurt") is a strange but beguiling piece. 

There's a flute interpolation apropos of not much at all, Warm Foothills has a choral opening and a nicely weaving vocal line (and whistling) and the final 16 minute piece Leaving Nara makes me think this Mercury Prize-winning outfit is now The Band Most LIkely to Go Prog-folk.

Very patchy indeed. 

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Melati ESP: adaptations (digital outlets)

Melati ESP: adaptations (digital outlets)

Well, you don't come to Elsewhere for Beyonce and J-Lo, do you? So here's something closer to our mandate: a series of remixes of tracks from the Indonesian-born, New York-based electronica... > Read more

Cookie Brooklyn and the Crumbs: Singles 2013 – 2019 (Burning Log/bandcamp)

Cookie Brooklyn and the Crumbs: Singles 2013 – 2019 (Burning Log/bandcamp)

The members of this Wellington-based trio have some prior form and have appeared at Elsewhere in the past: singer/guitarist Mark Williams has been in Marineville and Erika Grant (bass) and drummer... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

STARS WHO WANNABE OTHER STARS (1999): Vanity projects for the self-regarding

STARS WHO WANNABE OTHER STARS (1999): Vanity projects for the self-regarding

News that broadcaster Paul Holmes is recording an album has been greeted with derision in some quarters, but the collector's group of Vanity Incorporated Products can't wait until this album... > Read more

COLDITZ, THE COMPLETE COLLECTION (BBC box set)

COLDITZ, THE COMPLETE COLLECTION (BBC box set)

For many decades, those who remember this exceptional BBC series from the early Seventies have searched for it on video and latterly DVD. Over the decades the cachet of the 28 gripping episodes... > Read more