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Think About Life :: "Serious Chords"Serious Chords (2005)
There are those songs that take their time in showing the listener their subtle blemishes, and then there are those that take a big baseball bat and repeatedly bludgeon the listener’s head. “Serious Chords” is one those songs; blasting straight into an insistent house beat, this is an intense, relentless euphoric rush of a song, instilled with the kind of uber-caffeinated vigour that would do The Feelies proud.
Bubbly synths give way to a debilitated vocal croaks, or maybe just Grandma Olga on helium. Who cares. The band skates across the musical paradigms of bop, thrash and good ol’ post-punk, whilst maintaining that beat, with such poker faced authority that one can’t help but succumb to smiling at the carnival-esque weirdness of it all. They may be mad, but Think About Life have a surprisingly mature grip on melody, the final segue recalling the kind of macabre, vibrant hooks that could put them at risk of becoming big.
Touring with Wolf Parade shouldn’t do them any harm, either. The drowsy synths may obviously recall the original EP recordings of "Modern World" in all their cock-eyed glory, but a better analogy would be a Ritalin dosed, hypertensive Unicorns. Think About Life may not be the most cerebrally-concerned of bands, and “Serious Chords” has about as much relevance to a conventional indie disco, as, say, The Golden River does to a bar mitzvah, but you’d be hard-pressed into finding something more enjoyably innovative this year.
Alan Baban :: 25 October 2005 |
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