Music Reviews
Grammatics

Grammatics Grammatics

(Dance To The Radio) Rating - 8/10

Even in these beleaguered times, it's encouraging to recall that the indie label dream basically remains what it always was, namely to be a Mute or a Domino so that you can release as many Einsturzende Neubauten or Psapp albums as you like safe in the knowledge that the Depeche/Erasure and Franz/Arctics millions'll see you right for a while yet. Kudos, then, to !Forward Russia!'s Dance To The Radio - they may have broken through by catering to the masses, but those Pigeon Detective pounds are being spent on the cause of one of the most anti-landfill albums of recent years.

Of course, the moribund homogeneity of the charts and the oxygen-of-publicity-denying stroke that is MTV's asinine abandonment of 120 Minutes will ensure that Grammatics' profile is maintained at a strictly minimal level, but their debut affair, as suggested by a string of terrific singles last year (including the unexpectedly-absent and uncharacteristically anthemic New Franchise), positively revels in it status as a hidden treasure; indeed, there's a wilful lack of immediacy to much of the material here and a penchant for the kind of track-bridging tomfoolery last associated with Slanted & Enchanted. However, Grammatics have every reason to have adopted such a confident approach, not the least of which is Owen Brindley, who, since Colour Of Fire's demise, has reinvented himself as a frontman grasping at the air of a less arch but similarly unworldly Patrick Wolf, rooting around the high register last properly staked out by Geneva's Andrew Montgomery, and prone to eccentric stresses that throw the lyrics into sharp relief.

And what lyrics! The erudition here is a wonderful thing, not unreminiscent of last year's similarly out-of-step Wild Beasts album, and there's a real concern with the vividness of evocation and the uniqueness of observation (see, as examples, Inkjet Lakes' repeated cries of "I'm in a prism of refractions", or the splendid assertion in Cruel Tricks Of The Light that "you cool my blood until it creams"). Musically, too, the invention on show is a delight. It might not be totally unreasonable to cast them as a more bookish first-album Guillemots, but that's an overly-reductive take: Polar Swelling may be art-pop that sonically invokes the divine even in the face of humamn concerns (both global and personal), but its use of electro touches and jabbing strings shoves it intriguingly elsewhere, and even their more acoustic moments, such as Broken Wing, collide restlessly with tricky-to-predict sturm und drang, while the dense multi-layering of The Vague Archive - confoundingly, already felt to be one of the most commercial offerings here - is unfailingly wrongfooting even with the precaution of familiarity.

Besides, should they keep on mining this, there's the very real possibility of them delivering one of this year's finest singles - the cello-lionising Swan Song would be a terrific call here, although the woozy, almost M83-esque Relentless Fours is arguably an even stronger contender - and, of course, they've still remembered to include on of last year's best here too. D.I.L.E.M.M.A. has lost none of its sense of shattering assault, but now stands revealed as the only instance of equivocation we're likely to get from this lot, and their surefootedness is wholly justified: they may not be big, but they're certainly clever...