Albums of the week: The Magic Gang, Yo La Tengo and Creep Show

The biggest new releases, reviewed by our experts
New album: The Magic Gang

The Magic Gang - The Magic Gang
(YALA!)

***

Though it feels less central to the culture than it has at other times, huge London gigs on the way for bands including The Vaccines and The Wombats suggest that there’s still plenty of public appetite for lively, unchallenging indie rock. It may be Drake dominating the No 1 spot, and the daring end of hip hop and R&B getting most of the critical adoration, but sometimes people just want to jump around and sing along.

It might be a Northern thing, with guitar bands such as Blossoms and The Courteeners seeming to get more love above London for their throwbacks to the days of The Stone Roses and Oasis. Now a bunch from as far South as you can get is joining in.

The Magic Gang live together, Monkees-style, in Brighton. Though that cartoonish name may summon psychedelic visions of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, they’re not as wild as that. Their debut album is a good-humoured romp filled with crashing guitars and massed vocals. There doesn’t seem to be much to bring them down: “Party drugs don’t do anything/I don’t know why I bother,” Jack Kaye sings on Alright.

When they get louder, there are echoes of The Cribs and Super Furry Animals in the ramshackle guitars of Getting Along and Caroline. The gentler piano tune Take Care shows a more sensitive side, and there are more retro hints of The Beach Boys and The Byrds too, but it’s their consistent catchiness that should ensure their rise.

by David Smyth

Yo La Tengo- There’s a Riot Going On
(Matador)

***

Yo La Tengo’s 15th album opens with an ominous wave of guitar feedback. It threatens to explode for a while before settling, unriotously, into a hazy-moody, maraca-led shuffle of an instrumental.

There’s a riot going on all right — the title echoes Sly and the Family Stone’s 1971 classic, recorded in similarly troubled times — but the New Jersey trio would prefer to groove away in their own meandering, endearing, enduring way.

Yo La Tengo, built around husband-and-wife team Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubler, have been in the indie rock game since 1984 and this is more of a distillation than a departure, self-produced from scraps of gauzy synths, backwards guitars and sideways lyrics. A lot of it drifts on by but a mood of dreamy unease lingers on.

The standout is For You Too, a neat example of how much you can wring out of a standard guitar/bass/drums dynamic when your melodies have glimmer, your grooves have bite and your bass player wields a fuzz pedal like James McNew.

by Richard Godwin

Creep Show - Mr Dynamite
(Bella Union)

***


Creep Show, a collaboration between John Grant and the band Wrangler, is an experimental side- project combining pop and industrial electro with dance and funk.

At its very best, their debut channels repetitive, infectious krautrock — the influence of Einstürzende Neubauten and Kraftwerk feels unmistakable at times on the excellent Lime Ricky, Fall and Safe and Sound. Epic in structure and with subtle Brian Eno-like touches, the songs manage to be both cohesive and fiercely innovative. The best songs on the album are often those where a minimalist, melancholic tone is created — Modern Parenting being a good example.

Elsewhere on the album, however, a dizzying juxtaposition of styles and self-indulgence jars. A heavy, distorted manipulation of voices — such as that on Endangered Species — too often clashes with, rather than complements, the delicate intricacies of the synth and drum layering beneath each track.

by Elizabeth Aubrey

Fickle Friends - You Are Someone Else
(Polydor)

***

Fickle Friends have been touring heavily and releasing well-received pop bangers for the past few years, so their debut album already has the feel of a greatest hits collection. None of these synth-drenched tunes overstays its welcome. Compared with the abundance of faceless, generic dance music from blokeish DJs and producers, the Brighton band’s DIY electropop is positively bursting with personality.

Natassja Shiner’s breathy urgency ensures you’re never bored. As with so many of these retro-fixated groups, however, there’s the nagging thought that electronic music should really sound like the future rather than an Eighties cocktail bar. Nevertheless, Fickle Friends’ chart-friendly anthems are stubbornly hard to resist.

by Andre Paine

Leeroy - Leeroy Presents: Fela is the Future
(BMG)

**


Fela Kuti (1938-1997) was one of Africa’s greatest musicians and a thorn in the side of governments in his native Nigeria. To mark the 20th anniversary of his death, French hip hop producer Leeroy has recorded a dozen classic Fela songs in Lagos with surviving members of his band, Egypt 80, and younger artists.

Remarkably, he also brought in both Fela’s sons, Femi and Seun Kuti. Back in Paris he remixed the tracks and unfortunately created a bland, dated Afropop that takes all the power and stridency out of them. Fela’s uncompromising identity gets overwhelmed in programmed dance beats.

by Simon Broughton

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