WOE exclusive - red vinyl OR black vinyl
CD also available
Second album proper from the London-based five piece, which might come as a surprise to those following closely given the Indexe'e and Purple Born 12s in the past year or so, which you might fairly argue each contain enough music to qualify as album-length releases in their own right. Such a distinction, then, might be marked by a return to a more 'song-based' format, the basement dwelling dub-noise gloom of those interstitial records now replaced with a, let's say, more conventional approach of verses, choruses and melodies. Still, if you crave the unusual, do not fret, for there remains a murky, yet strangely romantic poeticism to their work that continues to position them suitably off-centre. As such, we get 40 minutes of 'heroin country' combat, art-folk romance and private universe mystique, which feels uniquely stood-staunch, as they would see it, against the terrible winds of the world that would do it wrong. This is a group that stands for something, but they're smart enough to let those drawn battle lines remain sufficiently ambigious - scan the lyrics and you'll find a rotating cast of dreaming thieves and wingless angels (good luck discerning which is which). It helps position the group as a kind of gang of cowboy outliers, in the same way you might have once understood The Gun Club, Psychic TV or Dome, which all things being equal, is a pretty seductive way of carrying oneself. The titular 'beam' becomes a telling one - whether one of light or structure, it tends to bend to its own understandings of the world. It's hard to not be drawn in by such direction.
FFO: Wire/Dome, Velvets, Sonic Youth, This Kind of Punishment, Psychic TV
