aaamusic | On 07, Nov 2011

Love Among The Mannequins album ‘Radial Images’ is a very promising debut, packed with real energy and an uncompromising knack for creating harsh but welcome licks.

 

The members of this Brighton four piece have been around, in some capacity, for some time – having previously been in bands such as Crooked Sea, O You Broken Eyes, Crooked Mountain, and Shield Your Eyes. ‘Radial Images’ is (arguably) the album that shows the most potential (for a higher level of success) out of all their past releases from their past bands.

 

The music is essentially post-hardcore, in the vein of Million Dead, however, there are elements of post-rock (as on the instrumental ‘George Robert Price’), jangly indie (as on ‘James Graham Ballard’), and a heavy influence of US alt-rock forming the overall vibe of the whole record (bands such as Pavement). The opener ‘Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov’ is one of the highlights, with gang vocals and a Million Dead-esque guitar line, and displays both punk-rock passion and melodic instrumentation. Vocally, throughout the whole album, there is also a sort of Frank Turner type approach – with both clean singing, spoken word rambling, and post-hardcore yelping. The drumming is accomplished throughout, and the math-rock guitar parts and extended experimentation makes Love Among The Mannequins f**king thrilling.

 

The only gripes I have with ‘Radial Images’ is that the production is a teeny bit tinny, and that despite the interludes and instrumentals, the album feel like it is lacking in some depth – perhaps because there isn’t really any variety offered in terms of sound or tempo. That said, post-hardcore fans have found a fresh new, distorted band to champion.

 

Clive Rozario