Showing markedly more musical muscle than on 2001’s marvellous Scary World Theory album, here Lali Puna continue to astound the open-minded listener with their melodic rapture and their lyrical scythe.
Singer Valerie Trebeljahr must be one of the most sensuous female vocalists since My Bloody Valentine’s Bilinda Butcher; witness the opening, very MBV-ish title track where she breathes: “We’ve been done before and now we try to forge ourselves.” Drums are far more to the fore?hear the amazing propulsion of “B-Movie” and the cataclysmic “Alienation.”
Throughout they continue to nibble against the suffocation of capitalism (“You’ve been told/Leave your dignity at home” from “Grin And Bear”), and by the final “Crawling By Numbers” they are truly fixing to die (“Can’t you see six feet underground?”). Another truly wondrous record.