English four-piece Late of the Pier released Fantasy Black Channel in the UK way back in June of 2008. Fans ate it up, the kids went mad, and the British music rags sopped it up with four-to-five star ratings. As though to tell us we’re finally ready for all of the magnitude this bloody thing has to let loose upon us, the record was finally released in North America on January 13, 2009.
Now sure, it’s really easy to yawn past another British debut. In fact, nobody seems to have quite the gift for hyperbole as the NME people or other UK music mag writers. With NME claiming that Late of the Pier “are rapidly making most other British bands seem like primitive, drooling Luddites by comparison” and Uncut telling us that these guys are the British answer to 2008 darlings MGMT, the praise is ceaselessly high.
Putting that aside, just how good are Late of the Pier anyways and just how fucking endlessly wicked is Fantasy Black Channel?
For starters, these four Castle Donington cats aren’t afraid of making pop music with an enigmatically untidy frame. There appears to be no genre-busting exercise that they won’t buckle down and attempt, as Late of the Pier’s debut record is slammed and jammed with several tracks of hard-nosed gusto and plucky energy.
Bubbling over with synth seriousness, danceable thumping, psychedelic pop waves, and a whole lot of experimental lunacy, Fantasy Black Channel shifts genres without trepidation and doesn’t mind wearing Gary Numan, Frank Zappa, and Queen influences right out in the open flanking the nods to the Klaxons and all things eternally fucking cheeky.
After all, how ballsy do you have to be to take a trip through the hallway of spandex rock right before twisting down a throaty techno bypass?
Fantasy Black Channel is so bold that it shifts gears, often in mid-song and mid-goddamn-sentence. Let a track like “Space in the Woods” take you for a drive and you’ll wind up in a much different place than where you started from with its pulsating disco beat, slimy guitar accents, and vocalist Samuel Dust’s dark declarations.
“The Enemy Are the Future” finds Dust contemplating the end of himself (once more) as a churched-out organ swells behind him begging for donations. A few bumps later and the song starts struggling to life, unfolding like a crated jack-in-the-box popping up for a nibble.
Drummer and percussionist Rouge Dog Consuela sets a ripping start to “The Bears are Coming,” a cut that rumbles with electronic correctness and makes no apologies for its industrial tone. And “Bathroom Gurgle” loads up with Francis Dudley Dance’s low bass and an enormously addictive Jack Paradise synth scrap.
Heavy on the glam-rock sheen and bursting with audacious and impenitent tang, Late of the Pier’s Fantasy Black Channel should stand out as one of the first truly great records to grace North American shores in 2009. Anthemic, pure, and electrifying, this is one band I’ll be watching closely.
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