BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB – Wrong Creatures, 4/5 (Abstract Dragon)
But if that dense, reverb-heavy style is the San Francisco trio’s default setting there’s plenty of subtlety and melody elsewhere.
Celebrating their 20th anniversary this year, BRMC’s eighth album is a complex and beautifully constructed set, the six-minute Haunt a superbly atmospheric slice of gothic blues, Ninth Configuration piling layer upon layer of guitar and keyboards into a swirling and chaotic finale.
Eight albums on the Rebels are as vital and engrossing as ever.
TO KILL A KING – The Spiritual Dark Age, 3/5 (These Are My Bones)
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The splendidly named Ralph Pelleymounter has a sublime rock voice: a rounded and authoritative croon that brings real power and authority to this London five-piece’s attacks on our godless society and American televangelists.
There’s real energy, too, even if their galloping style, somewhat reminiscent of American ska-rockers The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, does become a little repetitive.
In truth band and singer gel best on two sublime ballads: Cherry Fields and Oh Joy, either of them alone worth the price of admission.
TYPHOON – Offerings, 3/5 (Rollcall)
Somewhere in the midst of this Portland, Oregon, band’s fourth album – a dense, restless and largely very gloomy meditation on lost memory and identity – there’s a much shorter, better-produced record struggling to get out.
Seventy minutes long and sprawling over 14 tracks it’s beautifully played and there’s a sense of real sadness and passion in singer Kyle Morton’s melancholy voice.
But memorable melodies are in short supply and most listeners will find themselves dashing for the pause button several times before the end.
ARCELIA – Building On The Land, 3/5 (How Now)
Any trio that includes Teresa Gallagher, a voice artist for Thunderbirds and Thomas & Friends, has to be worth a listen but there’s not a single F.A.B. or “Yus, m’lady” in evidence here as Gallagher harmonises beautifully with Gavin Alexander and former Flying Picket Simon Foster.
The sound is laid-back, slightly West Coast-influenced folk with just a sprinkle of early Hall & Oates-style bucolic hokeyness on the wonderful Yellow Soup.
The opening track, Fallen, sets a melodic standard that the rest of the album doesn’t quite live up to and the lyrics are pretty wet – “the world is full of beautiful people, they just need a chance” – but the blending of voices is heavenly throughout.