This is a classic indie-pop album in the best sense: simultaneously joyful, melancholic, funny, childlike (childish?), dorky, silly, sincere, knowing and full of ironic in-jokes. And, most importantly, it’s not boring, which is where indie-pop albums sometimes trip up. There’s a wide variety of instruments – banjo, acoustic guitar, glockenspiel and various electronic sounds as well as the usual guitar/bass/drums and playful boy/girl vocals.
I’m unable to disguise my enjoyment of the album’s many hilarious lines, delivered in Aleks’ deadpan voice and buried somewhat low in the mix. For example: “This is not some elaborate prank/I learned to love like I learned to drive, in Soviet tanks”. Or: “What if you broke his heart/and he died in a car wreck/and then I played his part/in the re-enactment?” Or when bassist Janita reels off a list of absurd demands: “I want a superpower! And a photocopier! I wanna sleep around! I want a new stapler!” She later asks Aleks if he can call her an ambulance and he replies with a shrug: “I’ll have to use your phone, baby – they no longer take calls from me“.
(Man, I really should stop now).
All of those lyrics are from one song, Circa 1992 Ideas, one of the three standout tracks. Its blend of charmingly silly Darren Hanlon-style ballad with mutated elevator muzak is weird and winning. Destroy The Universe With Jazz Hands, which opens the album, is a three-part let’s-go-dancing-while-the-world-ends epic. And the beautiful album closer Antique Limb is probably my favourite pop song of the year, with its lovely major-key afro-pop rhythms and the delightful contrast between Aleks’ flat, gruff uncertainty (my housemate commented that “he sounds like he might slit his wrists!”) and Janita’s sweetness: “You’re a dream come true! I dreamed you up right down to your pointed shoes!“
(note the patented Ramps dance about two minutes in, often performed by the band at their live shows!)
I’d hasten to add, though, that this is a proper album album which flows from start to finish very nicely indeed with nary a dip in song quality. The feeling I get really strongly from this album is that it’s made by a bunch of people not unlike myself – young 20-somethings living in share-houses in the inner city, not yet ready to leave childhood entirely behind for adulthood, but negotiating an awkward, mostly-happy medium between the two. Hey Owl, for example, finds the protagonist attempting to deal with the death of his lover in a plane crash by alternately believing that they’ve come back as an owl “in the tree outside our place” or tricking himself into thinking that they’re simply away: “I can’t deal with this amount of change, so I pretend your phone’s still out of range“. I can’t decide whether the whole thing is clumsy and immature or genuinely heartbreaking, and therein lies its appeal – the way we negotiate through these periods in our lives bears the marks of both childish denial and real adult grief. So if you can deal with a bit of cutesiness in your indie-pop (and honestly, if you can’t then what’s the point of listening to indie-pop?), this album is excellent.
