These New Puritans released Beat Pyramid 2 years back with a sound that veered from scratchy post punk spiky guitars a la The Fall and Gang Of Four with moments of Electro beats and a pre occupation with numbers. Whilst hardly original it was certainly solid enough to stand out from the banal soppy guitar strumming that was permeating British music at the time.
So now we have the follow up and guess what? It's nothing like that apart from tonality and the previous albums liking for tribal drum beats. The band could have certainly honed their sound and continued along a more commercial path but instead they have come up with something even less commercial with the bands predilection for woodwind and brass pushed to the fore and the guitar virtually absent.
The beats are still there like a long lost relative of some of the more exotic beats from Massive Attacks Mezzanine but with ambient passages that sound completely out of place within the warm fuzzy guitar sounds that the likes of N.M.E fall over every other damn month.
There is no doubt that it takes a few listens as hooks and choruses take a back seat to a much more expansive sound that is not made for immediate listenability.
It's refreshing to hear a band to forge ahead and aim for their own sound even if it may spell commercial failure for the band. Although it sounds nothing like say Portishead's 3 album, it shares a similar sensibility as they both want to step out of restricted boundaries and experiment with song structure and bring together the digital and natural sounds that are rarely married successfully.
I won't herald this album as an instant classic. it lacks a little bit of warmth now and again and the vocals are not quite original enough but I appreciate what the band are trying to do when they could have easily travelled along the path called cliche. Worth a listen or three for sure.
The new 'single'. Hardly commercial and thank frig for that: