With its stabbed guitar lines, ramshackle drumming and freaked-out stop-start rhythmic structure, Architectural Failures’ opening track suggests that this is an album of yet more of the post-everything angular indie rock that is so goddamn hip right now. Then it goes off in a weird direction, with spooked chant-a-long lyrics and atonal synthesised drones forcing a wedge between the traditions. And so it goes on, introducing odd new aspects to what could just have stayed a good, but uninspiring set of songs. The vibraphone used on a large part of the album is a welcome and refreshingly ‘trad’ sound, adding a joyous twist to songs like Magic Teeth and Oskar which evokes that beautifully warm early-Tortoise sound. I don’t know too much about Hi Red Center but to my mind they’re more jazz than rock – more Soft Machine than Doors, if you will – and their music is more about crafting musical shapes than pummelling out rock familiarities. In the same way that a band like Liars arrive at a good place by travelling along a tortuous, complicated, frustrating but worthwhile journey, Hi Red Center don’t seem afraid to open themselves up to new ideas.

Hi Red Center
Pangaea Recordings

Posted: 05|7|06 at 5:16 pm. Filed under: record reviews.
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