Popular movements always trigger some sort of collateral damage. Young Knives – primarily now the Oxford based fraternal duo of Henry and Thomas Dartnall – are as good an example as any. The title of their sixth album is a reference to the period during which the Arctic Monkeys emergence triggered a landslide of chippy provincial lad bands, the often mediocre output of which was labelled indie landfill.
You can make up your own mind where their 2005 debut Voices Of Animals And Men lands in that pantheon, but unlike many contemporaries, they’ve survived it’s inevitable demise, spinning in ever decreasing commercial circles to the point you assume where existence is largely a case of pleasing yourself. And so Landfill goes, continuing a journey into abstraction on which the last stop – 2020’s Barbarians – proved to be a fulfilling experience for the open minded.
As with it’s predecessor Landfill is a cerebral trip round the dust ball we inhabit, with the awkward funk of Ugly House mourning their eviction from their long term base of operations and the poignant Your Car Has Arrived addressing the untimely death of Henry’s son’s best friend. The best moments predictably are at the margins however, Cause and Effect’s wonky hip hop vying with Dissolution’s abstract post punk tumble for the prize of being (substitute) teacher’s pet. Popular movements always cause damage but sometimes you just absorb the shrapnel and move on. The sound of that process is buried somewhere in here.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 