{"id":132,"date":"2010-01-04T05:28:44","date_gmt":"2010-01-04T10:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=132"},"modified":"2010-01-04T05:28:44","modified_gmt":"2010-01-04T10:28:44","slug":"album-review-arthur-walker-animal-nights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2010\/01\/04\/album-review-arthur-walker-animal-nights\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Arthur Walker – Animal Nights"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ArthurI know that \u201cangular\u201d is one of those critic-overused adjectives used to describe, well, post-rock, itself another overused descriptor. but Arthur Walker <\/strong>(a band, not a person) makes some angular music. They play kinetic, frenetic, skittery songs that call to mind early-early XTC <\/strong>(“Are You Receiving Me?” era) with vocals that evoke memories of Feargal Sharkey<\/strong> (of the Undertones<\/strong>). They also sound like a much more rock-oriented version of 70s art rock band Sparks<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

There’s plenty of texture, shade and light in the songs, but they all sport that sped-up, off-kilter vibe. “Angles and Lines” has vague hints of the Jam<\/strong>, but they’re applied in such a way so as not to appeal much to Jam fans. Much of the group’s sound gives the aura of a slightly-too-weird-for-1979 band out of some provincial English city. Durham or Dover, maybe. So it’s little surprise to learn they’re from Plymouth; one can’t get much further out of England than that without getting wet.<\/p>\n

There’s a quirkiness to Arthur Walker’s music that might attract fans of some of Robyn Hitchcock<\/strong>‘s more rock-oriented work. Their lyrical concerns — ebola viruses and whanot — would make an Egyptians <\/strong>fan right at home. The group does hew pretty closely to the I\/you\/they subject matter, but they do so in a truly skewed way. Songs with titles like “I am a Skull and I am Evil” and “Face Ache” suggest things area bit unsettled over in Plymouth.<\/p>\n

The songs are in turns high powered and subtle. Arthur Walker exhibit ample use of dynamics; in fact their dynamics veer perilously close to art-rock, and I’m pretty sure that’s not at all their intention. The group’s arrangements smack of college-educated background. They manage the “big guitar” ethos now and then, but several songs betray influences of ska, and Police<\/strong>-variety reggae.<\/p>\n

Arthur Walker’s tunes start out as conventional melodies, but the quartet delivers them in a way that keeps the listener off-base. Try dancing to this stuff (or even tapping your foot) and you might end up in an emergency room. There’s a bit of screaming, but it’s lightly applied, and more often or not Steven Stones’ warble is joined by harmony vocals from the other band members. Playing is precise — it’d have to be<\/em> to execute the ambitious stop-start arrangements the band so often employs.<\/p>\n

In sum: imagine weird, quirky post-rock new-wave played by prog musicians, and you’d conjure up something not unlike Arthur Walker. Snotty attitude and sheepskins, that’s what I hear. Fun, and not overly reminiscent of much else.<\/p>\n

Disclosure of Material Connection:
\n\"I<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know that \u201cangular\u201d is one of those critic-overused adjectives used to describe, well, post-rock, itself another overused descriptor. but Arthur Walker (a band, not a person) makes some angular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}