Short Piers and Space Travelers

Late of the Pier and They Came From the Stars, I Saw Them

Last week one of my absolute favorite bands in the world — Athens, Georgia-based Indie-Pop sextet of Montreal — released “Id Engager,” the first single from their forthcoming ninth full-length album Skeletal Lamping. That album, which doesn’t hit stores until October 7th, is one of, if not the most anticipated release of the year for me, so finally getting a taste of it was sort of a relief for me, since I know it’s almost here.

In of Montreal’s absence I’ve been keeping company with bands who demonstrate a similar fondness for freaky psychedelia, Pop melodies, eccentric songwriting, glammy glimmer, proggy pomp, funky basslines, soulful strutting, Disco beats and synthesizers of every brand. Brooklyn-based twosome MGMT for example has been a regular companion of mine, in large part due to their spinning-under-the-mirror-ball-ballad “Electric Feel,” and it’s extra-crispy Electro-fied remix courtesy of Justice, which remains one of my favorite tunes of the year in either version.

Late of the Pier ‘Fantasy Black Channel’I hadn’t really considered Castle Donnington, UK-bred quartet Late of the Pier one of those bands. I’ve had their demo for what seems like forever, and enjoyed it, but just never put them in that category. With the release of their debut full-length Fantasy Black Channel however, things changed a bit, and so did my view of the band. The album shares four of its twelve tracks with the demo, but under the aegis of producer Erol Alken they sound radically different, stripping away some of the punky DIY dirt and injecting a lot of glammy sparkle and clubby umph into the band’s fusion of Post-Punk, Power-Pop and Synthpop.

Like of Montreal frontman Kevin Barnes, Pier vocalist Samuel Eastgate spends a good deal of time yelping in his upper register. But the sneering insistence in his high-pitched whine is just as reminiscent of Buzzcocks founder Pete Shelley as it is some falsetto-favoring Disco/Soul singer or aloof Glam-God of the ’70s. The band itself favors jumpy rhythms, jagged riffs and stomping tempos drawn from across the gamut of Punk and New Wave, imbued with spacey synthesizer noodling, kitschy keyboard melodies and dramatic Arena-Rock-esque solos and instrumental flourishes. All of which Alkan amps up with fresh-from-the-club programming, more synths and other goodies.

“Space and the Woods” sounds like Devo jamming with The Rapture when Omar Rodríguez-López shows up to shred shit. The super-crunchy “Focker,” with squelchy synth squiggles and video game melodies backing Eastgate’s theatrical bellowing is more like Muse if they signed to Ed Banger. Melding campfire sing-a-long drumming growling synth-bass and claps “The Bears are Coming” sounds like the weirdest song The Gap Band ever recorded. “Random Firl,” with it’s playful melody, sun-baked harmonies and fat synthesized bassline sounds like some Dubstep producer remixing ’70s AM radio. “The Enemy are the Future” and “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” both start off sounding like something The Clash could have before closing with Rave-ready beats and Prince-ish synths respectively. While “Bathroom Gurgle” revisits both the dirty French Electro-House sound and the Devo influences, by way of ’80s teen-movie soundtrack Synthpop and melodramatic ’70s Art-Rock.

Late of the Pier “Hearbeat”

They Came From the Stars, I Saw Them ‘We are All In the Gutter But Some of Us are Looking At…’Many of the same attributes apply to London-based collective They Came From the Stars, I Saw Them, although as the name might indicate they’re even more inclined towards flowery ’60s psychedelia and far-out ’70s camp. Their new album We are All In the Gutter But Some of Us are Looking At… finds them frothing at the mouth with stream of conscious wordplay, singing about Lionel Richie, Stephen Hawking, shipwrecked aliens and all manner of metaphysics both practical & theoretical while kicking out the extended five-plus-minute jams with little regard for such notions as genre, song structure, accessibility or marketability.

Vocalist Horton Jupiter gets his flamboyant falsetto on, no doubt. But it’s tempered by a mushy quivering delivery a-la former Clash guitarist and Big Audio Dynamite frontman Mick Jones or Legendary Pink Dots co-founder Edward Ka-Spel. And with the band entwining lo-fi electronics, Hippie drum-circle dance beats, jazzy embroidery, cacophonous breakdowns and baroque textures, it all comes off something like B.A.D. or Pink Dots had they formed in the age of The DFA’s Post-Disco revivalism, Animal Collective’s Anarcho-Folk, Architecture In Helsinki’s carefree Avant-Pop and the self-consciously post-modern Indie-Pop of acts like of Montreal (duh).

On “It’s Time,” “Moon Song” and “Down On the Dancefloor” (think: Black Moth Super Rainbow covering the Universal Robot Band on Paw Tracks) the band flexes its discotheque rattling muscles, spinning urgently pounding beats, muscular basslines, celestial synths, tootling woodwinds and skronking brass into a sparklingly kaleidoscopic tapestry that billows around an ecstatically writhing, patchouli-scented body wrapped inside. “Lionel’s Tears,” the tune dedicated to Lionel Ritchie and the band’s own love of Pop music, is almost a Hot Chip song with it’s tongue-in-cheek Soft-Rock-meets-Slow-Jam groove and acerbically sentimental lyricism. While the schizophrenic “Monkey Typewriter” questions humanity’s true intellect and marvels at it’s creative capacity over a ten minute FreeFunkJazzDiscoNoiseGlamPsyche mindfuck of a track. It’s like a trip through some eclectic DJ’s record collection, and the album is the mixtape that DJ made for his weird Hippie friends to take back to the commune with them for the big sing-along/Rave/orgie that’s supposed to trigger the return of their extra-terrestrial Gods.

They Came From the Stars, I Saw Them “(Down On the Dancefloor) Let’s Make Something R.E.A.L.”

Neither album is concerned with the bandleaders’ middle-aged, African-American, transgendered, cross-dressing, ex-con, Glam-Funk alter-egos like Skeltal Lamping supposedly is. But they’re both weird, wild, flamboyant, fabulous and funky in their own way. And that’s good enough for me.

This entry was written by El Keter, posted on August 13, 2008 at 10:41 am, filed under Music and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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