Sometimes attempting to draw a line through music history to connect the different points which ultimately combined to present the portrait of a new record can be difficult, but that is not a problem from which anyone who hears Night Loop – the new album by Harlan – will suffer. The ingredients responsible doe the flavor are easy to pick out: a couple of pounds of Eighties new wave mixed with a cup of Brit-Pop and a table spoon of electronica, seasoned to taste with varying amounts of trip hop (of the Sneaker Pimps sort, not Tricky brand) per track. Mixed together and poured into ten little trays, listeners will find a taste sensation that some may call stale and some will say hits the spot just like mother used to make;. There is no defining principle which says plainly which camp an individual listener will fall into, which basically means everyone needs to hear the record to decide for themselves.
Those who remember and miss the chemically enhanced colors, edges and beats of the British electronica explosion which bubbled up for the underground in the middle of the Nineties will immediately recognize a slightly altered concentration of that mixture as “Daffodil” aerates in to open the record. There, hints of Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Massive Attack and (the happier side of) Alabama 3 converge with the ideas of Nineties pop royalty (Blur, Oasis) to present a perfect and meticulous reconstruction of tuneful, radio-ready English alt-pop in all its spotless and perfectly performed glory. It's sort of ironic given that the band is from the southern U.S., but hearing that mix – just as was the case fifteen years ago – is positively refreshing. The plot gets even thicker though, because rather than presenting it as a novelty that the band uses to hook listeners before running off in uncharted directions, Harlan seeks to find gratification in simply working within that long-since established paradigm – and it still proves to be satisfying. Songs like “Death In The Living Room,” “You're A Teenager,” “Reversibility” and “I Aim To Be You Modern Man” all stick close to the Brit-Pop basics (that sort of perfect combination of melody, respectably simple drums and guitars which can take a listener into a completely different orbit without being incredibly technical) and present the sort of delicate songwriting that is both tender and crass in its candor (don't lines like “I've got the thirty-two-year itch/ I'm ready to be fat and rich” about say it all?) and leaves listeners with a warm fuzzy feeling in their hearts and the desire to play it all over again as “Catherine O'Hara” strums its way through a G-B minor-C progression to close out the record on a sweet note. It's the sort of end that is far from a hard close, but it's great bait for listeners; they'll want to inhabit every note of every song through this album because nothing about it is aggressive or really daunting, it's just the non-threatening kind of thing to win the world over politely.
You're not sold – I can tell. You're probably thinking that you won't be able to palette something which samples from sounds over a decade old (two to five – in some cases) and you might be right – but it's not bloody likely. True, Night Loop won't be for everybody – but there are sounds here which have touched pop fans for decades and made those who wrote the songs rich men. Those listeners (all of them) will discover that they sorely missed a sound like this after they sample it and will devour it voraciously. They'll be waiting for seconds when Harlan returns too – guaranteed.
Artist:
www.thestillbeat.com/
www.myspace.com/stillbeat
Album:
Night Loop is listed on Amazon, but will not be released until October 16, 2012. Watch here for pre-order.
