Bad Elephant 2015
Magnet
Irresistible pull on a minor scale bridging the past and the future.
Keeping up with their tradition of interspersing full albums with lesser creations, TFATD extend their gravitation with the EP that finds the quartet facing forward and looking back at the same time. Perhaps, it was Matt Steven’s solo foray of "Lucid" that gave his band a point of reflection to resume the motion on a more texturized level.
Such a change is obvious when the guitars of “Flint” – whose original version opened 2011’s “If It Carries On Like This We Are Moving To Morecambe” and shows the Lancashire relocation didn’t happen – surf Kevin Feazey’s bilging bass with a vibrant vigor, yet the short “Magnet In Your Face” rocks wild and dirty as if to demonstrate how the fuel’s been replenished, before letting a light picking lead the way for the heavy riffs to gain a new momentum. This slightly relaxed, although highly charged, approach also marks the rehearsal runs through “Spooky Action” and “Let’s Start A Cult” which flesh out the mini-album in a spirited fashion, and the unhurried sway of “Palm Trees” where Stuart Marshall’s drums welcome handclaps to add a human touch to the instrumental interplay.
Time signatures constantly shift here, shaking dynamics and moods with a kaleidoscopic unpredictability, as Stevens and Steve Cleaton chop it all with their axes, until the soundscape of “Part 6 (The Eighth Circuit)” – another bit of a puzzle scattered across all of TFATD’s platters – unfolds an FX-stricken Celtic panorama and the band build a dark monument on it, a kind of a giant realization of this record’s title. There lies a germ of their next work, one already pulling the listener.
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