Audiopleasures: These New Puritans

Sunday 20 April 2008

These New Puritans - beat pyramid [2008]

One of the key acts in the great 2008 hype frenzy, These New Puritans could hardly sound more 'now'. You can hear the influence of perennially hip new wave touchstones like The Fall and XTC in here, but this band's grasp on excitable, electronically reinvigorated rock music is bound to see them touted as 'this year's Klaxons' (along with any other indie band you could dance to). Deerhunter would also be a valid name to throw into the mix, particularly when you consider short vignette tracks like 'Doppelganger' breaking up the flow of acoustic four-to-the-floor rhythms. Don't let any of this fool you into thinking Beat Pyramid is derivative or standard-issue in any sense though. There's a real intelligence behind the album in terms of its writing, its instrumentation and the way it's all presented. The song titles alone should give some indication of how distinctly non-standard all this is, reading like a list of randomised, computer-generated text ('C. 16th ±', '£4' and '4' spring to mind immediately) and tending to flow like some shuffle-generated playlist based on what you'd imagine Thom Yorke's iPod to be filled up with. While the record is structurally very smart - very in keeping with the anti-album zeitgeist - there's a real intelligence behind this music in terms of its writing and instrumentation, from the impeccable, angular pop of 'Elvis' and 'Mkk3' to the jerky glitch textures of 'En Papier', it's all flat-out brilliant. An enormously impressive debut album this, and one that comes very highly recommended. - Boomkat