It’s amazing how important the order in which you listen to songs can actually be. My phone, which I use instead of an iPod or some such other nonsense stores about five albums at a time, so I use it for whatever albums I am thinking of reviewing at the time and listen on the way to work and when generally wandering. The thing is, apart from using random, there is no way to order the tracks in any way other than alphabetically by song name. For some albums this can be disastrous. Remember the Alex Cornish album I reviewed a while back? Well I thought it was dreadful when I listened to the songs this way round, and it was only once I started listening to them in the order in which Mr. Cornish actually intended that I began to like the album.

With The Mabuses it has been the other way around. For some reason, in the proper order, the songs haven’t quite grabbed me but when I listen on my phone I love this album. Even now I have realised this is still isn’t quite happening when I hear them the right way around. Odd that, but I am glad it happened because this is a bit of a wee gem of a record and I might not have realised it otherwise.

Basically about two thirds of it is a pretty standard indie album, drifting between a slightly Echo & the Bunnymen style dark indie style thrum and a lighter, more playful thrum with mobile harmonies. They even sound a bit like Gomez at times, actually. So far so similar to a million other albums. What sets this record completely apart is the other third. This half is the same sort of thing, but with peculiarly classical accompaniments that, instead of applying classical instruments to indie songs, which is nothing new, or dishing up a tedious helping of ‘Hollywood strings’, do something quite unusual.

It’s almost as if they kidnapped a classical musician or two who had never heard of indie music and told them that they would never play another symphony again, they were now in an indie band. With no idea what indie is, these musicians simply play classical refrains whenever anyone looks at them, as this is the only music they know. A peculiar clarinet (I think) loop co-exists with opener Dark Star in such a fashion that it seems to only accidentally have been played at the same time, rather than being part of the same song. Garden Devils could be part of Peter and the Wolf. That clarinet makes a near-identical return on Mirth.

These unexpected juxtapositions are the high points of the album for me, but they seem to need the plain vanilla indie tracks to throw them into perspective. Basically, although this record couldn’t exist without the straightforward indie tracks, it is invariably these that let it down: a couple are leaden and lack a sticky hook of any sort, which is a shame because the rest of the album is an inventive pleasure. Three-quarters brilliance, I’d say, and a very pleasant surprise indeed, given how long I took to get into the thing.  Stupid thing though – my favourite song might actually be the fucking bonus track hidden at the end of Destinations.

The Mabuses – I’m the Greatest
The Mabuses – Dark Star
The Mabuses – Bonus Track

website | hype | amazon | emusic