Celebration - This Modern Tribe
With scatty drumbeats that'll have you tapping your feet, infectious melodies that'll force your shoulders to sway and euphoric organs that'll cause you to close your eyes -there's a serious danger of looking like an idiot while listening to this album. But that's okay.
This Modern Tribe by Celebration is a beautiful, richly layered tapestry of an album. I struggle to remember the last time a three-piece produced such a depth in their sound. The album opens with Evergreen, a swirling dreamlike track which is followed by Pressure, a funked up ascending tension filled tune. These two tracks offer a superb indication as to what to expect - the unexpected. The album will lift and drop you and kick you while you fall like a vicious ex-girlfriend.
This factor is essentially the records strength and is the main contributing factor to its depth. Katrina Ford leads the vocals and is strongly backed. The vocal styles vary from mantra-like to the androgynous screech and scream of Pony.
One look at the band's Myspace and their scribblings and you'll observe a morose tone. This can a be nauseating quality in a band. So when I began to read about their disgust at the world you could hear the sound of my eyes rolling backwards fro miles around. However, upon closer inspection it becomes apparent that the band's dismal outlook is born out of awareness and sensitivity. This is conveyed in the album which offers an overall uplifting antidote amid pensive lyrics. "They don't know what we have done, they say the world has just begun" in Tame the Savage.
Celebration hail from Baltimore in the US. They have a modest, ever expanding following since their self titled debut caused much stir in many different circles. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Blood Brothers and TV on the Radio can be listed as both influences, fans and indeed friends. Some tracks are produced and contributed to by said artists.
I'm often hesitant to compare bands sounds and style to others. I fear that it paints a terrible portrayal of the music journalistic as someone who merely digests records before filing them away under any one of a million sub-headings.
However, imagine if you will, the bastard love-child of The Flaming Lips and The Klaxons born in the s tender loving surrogate womb of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Got it? Meet... Celebration.