Joe Goddard – Harmonics review

You get by with a little help from your friends is almost the title of an old song, but on Joe Goddard’s third solo album it’s also a way of working. Embracing the concept to it’s fullest, the Hot Chip mainstay described his approach to it as flowing from ‘This idea of trying to divorce your conscious mind from the music-making process – not trying to force meaning on the music or your collaborators, allowing that process to be very empathetic’.

Ok, so that still all sounds a little bit vague, but it’s a results business, and Harmonics is very much a case of the right ingredients, cooked just right. Goddard himself still takes vocal duties on for the likes of Follow You and On My Mind, but otherwise the idea of letting your co-stars take the material where they will is boss.

The upshot is that the question ‘What does a Joe Goddard solo album sound like?” will for the time being be defined as this. Fellow Chippers Alexis Goddard and Al Doyle show up on the half step ballad Mountains, but the real juice is provided by Jazz maverick Alabaster De Plume (On closer Revery), Jungle’s Tom McFarland (Ghosts) and Ibibio Sound Machine’s Eno Williams (Progress). The standout though in what is as a whole a hugely listenable effort is provided by former Wild Beasts singer Hayden Thorpe, who steals the show on the Disclosure-esque house of Summon. Harmonics is a fine example of musical democracy in action.

You can read a full review here.