9

Snake Like

'New Skin' is the third single from Celebration's debut album and carries on 4AD's tradition of melancholic, minimalist songs with a dark edge and distinct vocals. In a nutshell it takes elements from the art goth bands of the mid to late 80s and brings them up to date.

The title track is an upbeat, keyboard led number that is full of retro influences whilst managing to sound contemporary at the same time. The guitars in particular draw much from the Bauhaus and Sex Gang Children school. The vocals are delivered with the avant garde maniacal twist of early Banshees and have quite a unique sound. Celebration are clearly happy to follow their own path as 'New Skin' is neither catchy nor commercial and for that they deserve credit but it probably means that this is unlikely to be a huge seller.

'Fools Gold' begins in quite haunting manner and continues throughout. Never getting above walking pace it crawls along in rather spooky fashion with the vocals being to the fore. It's certainly atmospheric though with a good dark edge and illustrates the other end of the spectrum within which Celebration operate.

Like many of the artists that have appeared on 4AD over the years, Celebration are an acquired taste and there will no doubt be a hardcore of fans willing to die for them. The downside of that being that it's unlikely they will have any kind of mass appeal.