A delicately scuzzy, filth-ridden, off-beat weirdness.
Slivering out on a floor of grit and distortion trapdoors, this brittle, brilliant sacrifice opens with 'A Trinity of Pears', a slack-jawed and canine piece of beautiful filth that twists through the smoke and sinks into you as quick as you spotted it coming. "I ride my coconut in liquorice and at the corner of your jaw." Indeed, Dead Sir, indeed.
The drums crack themselves clean, the bass is suitably a little unkempt and nonchalant, and the guitar is a glorious mess of strings and slight amp distortion. Vocals swing around the notes, chanting, slurring and generally doing the sort of thing you'd expect from an uncannily, unintentionally cool collective of musicians.
Proudly played acoustic guitars over the top of the jittery rhythms, along with discord ends and a general disregard for any convention other than writing songs and writing them well. These are the themes you should come to expect from Vague Angels. Paradoxically, you should also expect a natural desire to skip, even though you may feel affection to it. You'll be listening to the equivalent of your kitten that you beat up in your sleep. You won't want to accept it, but a love within will make you keep on going. It'll make you feel uneasy. So be in the mood, or else.
And if you are in the mood, you are in the right frame of mind for assessing the darker, unavoidable sides of life. This is the brilliant spawn of Sonic Youth and The Pixies, all patched together in an understanding between each member. The soul thrives in bands like these, but it is so rare to find! Songs like 'The Difference Between This, That, and the Other Thing' (I'm a-roaming / everything I own is broken') tell the story of a band getting together to have good times and great big distorted whale of a sound. They know that their things are all in the right place.
If it wasn't comatose in frenzy, the bones of this album would tip a hat to the likes of, something produced by Steve Albini on amphetamines ... maybe even a touch of something far more off the wall. Like a brick thrown through an expensive-looking window.
The only reason that 'Truth Loved' swaggers is because it's broken at the spine and was shot in the leg at birth. Give mercy, and shoot it properly next time.
('I want to bury my dick.')