It is a curious thing that after three decades during which much of popular music has aspired to a posture of perfect cynicism, be it sneering (70s), aloof (80s), or bored (90s), that now in the mid-noughties (someone thyink of a better name for the decade, please!) a new breed of bands are making music that doesn’t so much want to spit in your face as put its arm around you and tell you at length how amaaazing the universe is. Maybe the ecstacy revolution has finally seeped into the collective consciousness. Maybe we’re just bored of being bored. Maybe (and this is my theory), youth culture and pop music, which are now getting towards sixty years old have got over the midlife crisis of the 80s and 90s and are now experiencing a second childhood through early onset dementia.

Whatever the reason, the latest band to attempt the Sigur Ros/Explosions in the Sky formula of taking the three seconds of orgasm and stretching them out to fill an album are five angular and interesting looking Swedes called Jeniferever. In common with the aforementioned Icelandic/Texan purveyors of wonderment, Jeniferever fashion long drawn-out bliss-fests out of echos, chimes, sparkly bits and Mogwai’s early classic Helicon 1 (given that the ‘gwai have been having far more fun indulging their darkside since then, this seems fair enough). In contrast, they ditch the no-vocals/
funny-falsetto-choirboy-vocals-in-made-up-language approach in favour of Kristofer Jonsen’s hushed breathy tones and even the occassional traditional song structure. The results are fucking great, songs that are light and airy but somehow rumblingly powerful, calling to mind many adjectives you can’t use in a music review without sounding like a twat: magical, bewitching, fluffy…

It might not hit you outright with the obviousness of your local emo band, but if you have the time, the inclination, and don’t mind being thought a bit of a pussy by your metaller mates, this record will richly rewards your efforts. Listened to in space, post-coitally on some kind of mid-strength hallucinogenic drugs, it would almost certainly cause you to explode in a shower of loveliness. My NASA application goes in this afternoon.

Posted: 06|8|06 at 10:16 pm. Filed under: record reviews.
Comments and pings are currently closed.