Why would anyone not be drawn to an opening track that begins “I got a slab where I should have a face”? Accompanying that is a delightful backdrop of jangly slacker pop and harmonies that feel like they’ve been willed to the band by the recently departed genius Brian Wilson. Tom Brown and Rob Fawkes really are a gifted partnership.
If ‘Slab’ was the happy-go-lucky elder brother, ‘Thirty Seven’ is the adventurous, unpredictable younger sister, all sweet and innocent on the surface but prone to mischievous streaks like the unruly instrumental breakdown in the middle of the track. Having said that, if you took SLOTHS as a whole, I could have easily have summed it up in just four words: “This record is sunshine.”
‘How You Gonna Get Even?’ even ends with a little flourish that reminds me of the ravishing mandolin passage that concludes ‘Maggie May’, while ‘Someone You Forgot,’ despite starting with the lyrics “The summer ends how it began / two left feet, some diazepam,” continues to radiate a wealth of sunshine into your life. It’s one of the most summer-flecked releases I’ve heard in a long time.
Not only that, but these compositions are all instantly addictive, so by the time you reach the midway point with the brilliantly titled ‘Lonely Heart Pyramid Scheme,’ which is a little like the stuff The Kinks put out in the 1970s, any worries you had in your life evaporate, to be replaced with a burning desire to punch the air and get caught up in the sheer elation of Rural France.
The Wiltshire based duo’s pop sensibilities seem to echo that decade quite a lot on SLOTHS, inhabiting that space of the ultra-infectious songwriting of Roy Wood, the commerciality of The Cars and the urgency of the New Wave bands of the era, along with its DIY attitude. There’s also an early nineties feel apparent (see Teenage Fanclub or maybe even Sugar) to some of these songs, so ‘Jukebox Weepie’ is one of the catchiest songs you’ll hear this year, while the more laid back ‘Casio’ reveals a gentler side to the Brown and Hawkes machine, though even this one is thrilling too.
‘High Hopes (Ballad Of Rural France)’ could have sounded hopelessly twee in other bands’ hands, but here it is carried off so magnificently that you’re banging the table with whatever you’re holding in an attempt to recreate the exhilarating (albeit simple) rhythm.
I don’t normally comment on every single track on a record but SLOTHS is such an easy listen that it would be churlish not to. So while the finale of ‘Electrical Tape’ has a kind of unflappable nonchalance about it, it builds so perfectly that it absolutely deserves its place as the curtain closer here, its slightly out of tune, crudely recorded solo piano somehow becoming a flawless climax.
What an album. It’s up there with the best records of the year, for sure, and there really have been some great ones, so that’s no mean feat.
SLOTHS is released on 8th May through Safe Suburban Home/Meritorio Records.