07.07.08

It’s not for the cock, it’s for the fantasy

Posted in Albums, G-Town at 2:12 pm by G Town

Late of The Pier- Fantasy Black Channel

After first triggering the hype mongers, the A and R men and a wide cross section of the press, not to mention an army of music lovers,  into a frenzy almost two years ago, the highly anticipated debut from Late Of The Pier is (nearly) with us. As a band more than content to do things by their own watch, they’ve decided to put the album out now rather than jumping to premature attention when all the blogs were first going mental about them.

The album starts with the wailing, swaying guitars of the glam-rock “Hot Tent Blues” before falling into more familiar pop territory of “Broken”.  It’s not until track three (”Space and The Woods”) however, that the album starts to get the feeling of some momentum. This and the other previous single, “The Bears Are Coming” are both brilliant, high energy songs with a distorted mentality on pop music. They twist and turn, groove and bend awkwardly from genre to genre whilst always keeping a big emphasis on the sense of fun being had by both band and listener.

The most interesting song is a relatively new one. “The Enemy Are The Future” is a progged out vision with its head clearly half in the clouds and half in a big melting pot of ideas. It’s the sort of song Davids Byrne and Bowie would fight over for the song writing credits. After lulling the senses with mellow yet unpredictable and disjointed melodies, the song builds into a driving and foot stomping force.

When Late of The Pier previously talked about influences from across the musical spectrum (rather than just the over emphasised 80s glam and thrash sounds) from Franz Ferdinand to The Beatles, it was hard to take them completely seriously. However, with the gorgeous harmonies on the excellent “Random Firl” and the spacey psyche of “The Enemy..”, a certain 1960s pop band’s zebra crossing last recorded album is conjured readily and happily to mind.

A lot of the old songs are revamped to the max. “VW” sounds like Muse headlining Mars as the Earth explodes in the background while “Heartbeat” begins with a sprinkling of glittery 80s pop keyboards and “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” is featured here with new found vicious spikyness.

However, the reworking of old songs is one of the few, possibly the only, problems with “Black Fantasy Channel”. The album has a slightly eyebrow raising lack of new material. Alarm bells start to ring out when the fact is that the majority of the songs here have been available on the internet for years and even previous B-sides have made the cut. Taking this slightly out of context and into the ears of a new listener, however, this is an album of great quality. What “Fantasy Black Channel” lacks in surprises, it more than makes up for in big, mind warping songs with unrelenting energy. No doubt the broadsheet press and the NME will love it while the uber cool message boards and blogs will slate it, but that seems irrelevant as Late of The Pier will carry on regardless with a growing legion of fans in support. For long term fans and uneducated listeners alike, this album continues with great depth and diversity from start to finish and the makers have provided enough potential alternative routes to go down in the future that album two is already a thoroughly exciting prospect.

Black Fantasy Channel will be released on the 11th August.

www.myspace.com/lateofthepier

Random Firl

VW

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