aaamusic | On 14, May 2012

Recently I felt I was obliged, as an avid NME reader, to try and listen to Animal Collective’s 2009 “Masterpiece” Merriweather Post Pavilion. I felt that I was missing out, that many others had gained a deeper appreciation of Pop music because of it’s “artistic depth” and “fierce creativity”. Or something. Turns out that when I did get round to listening to it I got through two tracks that both felt half an hour long and then turned off because I was falling asleep. While not long ago I would have thought that I was the one in the wrong, that I was too dense to appreciate great art. Now I’ve come to the conclusion that while you can make the densest, most impenetrable music known to mankind and understandably slap the term art onto it, a more noble and admirable result is making art out of music that people can actually, y’know, enjoy. This way of thinking is demonstrated to perfection on Spectors, the debut album from Stalking Horses, Aka ex-This Et Al guitarist Wu. This is an album as fun to listen to as it is undeniably high brow, which isn’t rare in itself, we still have the likes of Radiohead, PJ Harvey and Wild Beasts doing the same thing, but what is rare is how well it’s done on a debut album.

Kicking off on a high note with the glam rock Kid A stylings of opener Key Strokes, the first thing that most will latch on is Wu’s uncanny vocal resemblance to one Mr. Thom Yorke, to the extent where the uninitiated might think this is a new Radiohead album, or at least what The King Of Limbs should have sounded like. Fortunately, the only reason this might sound like a Radiohead album is because of their tendency to sound radically different with each album, rather than Specters being a rip off in any way. In fact the album would probably have sounded guarded and austere if it wasn’t for the dead on impression of one of British Rock’s most haunting and expressive voices leading the whole thing. It is especially effective on the likes of The Creeps, where the harmonies over Wu’s lead vocal combined with the tight and subtle use of some pretty standard instruments (guitar, bass, etc.) create something very powerful indeed.

And while the album may be characterised by synthy soundscapes and minimal guitar-lines, the sheer variety on offer is something else, would such a defiantly stark piano ballad as Mistress work on, say Two Dancers? I think not. And thank Christ for that, y’see, this album has everything that most great albums have, it has a wide palette of different sounding songs (try comparing Doctor a Heart and Heathen Head, Howling Heart) that, for all their differences are united by a shared aesthetic (most obviously Wu’s heart-rending voice) and are great in their own right. But after all that, the chances that it will be as celebrated as Merriweather Post Pavilion are still negligible. Because of that, I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.

★★★★★

Will Howard