LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy was in a espresso store when he heard a tune from Mermaid Chunky’s deeply weird ‘VEST’ EP, prompting him to signal the Gloucestershire avant-pop duo to his label DFA. Introduced with that doubtlessly career-launching endorsement, a brand new band might be forgiven for firming issues down. As a substitute, Freya Tate and Moina Moin’s debut album ‘Slif Slaf Slof’ is even weirder: a startlingly humorous, brash combine of people, home and psych-pop which – for all its eccentricity – has actual function and coronary heart.
‘Slif Slaf Slof’ centres on the surreal, character-driven lyrics of Tate and Moin. On album spotlight ‘Chaperone’, Moin – forged as a divorced audiobook writer from the Deep South – drawls earlier than a packed Wembley Stadium: “my bosom is increasing a lot that I can hardly see y’all faces.” Tate’s accompanying chants (“journey that pony, smack that booty”) have a spontaneous really feel, like she’s barely accomplished them earlier than bursting into laughter off-mic. All through the album, their twin vocals span melodic singing, spoken phrase and barked, David Byrne-esque ad-libs.
Instrumentally, the album attracts a line between completely different conceptions of ‘social gathering music.’ The euphoric opening observe ‘Céilí’ takes its identify from conventional Scottish and Irish folks dances, starting with a easy melody on Moin’s recorder. Because the melody is looped and layered, ‘Céilí’ morphs right into a digital-age interpretation of early ‘dance music’, joined by the squelching synths and mid-tempo beats that dominate the album. It’s slightly transferring, and a robust throughline for the file: illustrating how individuals have felt this similar pull in the direction of dancing collectively since time immemorial.
This fusion of various sounds in longer, multi-phase tracks additionally gives ‘Slif Slaf Slof’ with actual emotional depth. The music accompanying the story of a time-and-space-travelling dancer in ‘Tiny Gymnast’ is led by a trembling sustained organ, all of a sudden playful within the oompah essential verse, then impossibly assured with the swaggering synth groove outro. It roughly charts the dancer’s surreal coming-of-age story, but in addition factors to the disappointment or uncertainty which will lurk behind the album’s extroversion and theatricality. That is additionally an album the place temper and tone can activate a dime: the creeping agitation of ‘Nature Woman’, with its chilly, metallic stay percussion sitting oddly on the digital beats, is all of a sudden warmed by Moin’s craving saxophone.
When this instrumentation is stripped again for the purely acapella ‘Medieval’, the observe feels barely misplaced. There’s the identical offbeat lyricism – “are you a woman with a cone in your head?” – and sense of motion due to the pulsing, layered vocals, however it feels flat and uncovered in comparison with their incorporations of those folks sounds into longer, extra dynamic tracks.
It’s this that makes Mermaid Chunky really feel particularly thrilling: their eager sense of how one can deliver disparate musical concepts collectively. Whereas ‘Slif Slaf Slof’ largely presents itself as foolish, eccentric enjoyable, the album’s mixture of innovation and emotion makes it price taking critically.
Particulars
- Label: DFA Data
- Launch date: September 13, 2024
