Fantasy Black Channel

Album Review

It's a yawnably familiar back-story: following a string of hyped independent singles, a band of young upstarts drops its eagerly anticipated first LP to the notoriously hyperbolic adulation of the British music press. As U.S. listeners would discover five months later, when an Astralwerks release in early 2009 gave them a chance to hear what all the fuss was about, it's a familiar sound, too: in essence, the same basic mode of synth-heavy dance-punk that has dominated blogs and indie club nights ever since the Rapture's breakout early in the decade. But while Late of the Pier might be the latest in a lengthy line of '80s-indebted electro-rock synthesists, up through and including their frequently RIYL'd counterparts Klaxons, they are also among the most inventive and musically ambitious acts to ply that sound. It's those qualities, rather than any specifically identifiable musical characteristics, that have earned the foursome comparisons to figures like Frank Zappa, Todd Rundgren, and Brian Eno, and which make their eclectic and genuinely experimental-feeling debut, Fantasy Black Channel, such an invigorating and, for the most part, successful enterprise. If nothing else, it's certainly a wild ride. Although five out of its 12 tracks had previously appeared as singles, only a couple of them (the riff-centric, Gary Numan-ish "Space and the Woods," the classicist dance-rocker "Broken," and perhaps the kinetic, jerky "Heartbeats") play out like obvious singles in the typical pop sense. Otherwise, the album tends to dole out its abundant hooks in less than conventional ways, favoring elaborate, multi-part song structures with extended instrumental interludes and transitions (starting from the absurdly grandiose glam guitar fanfare of the opening "Hot Tent Blues"), "ambient" breakdowns, and periodic tempo shifts (the intermittently irresistible mini-epic "Bathroom Gurgle" features at least four). Along the way, Late of the Pier pack in nu disco and Afro-funk grooves, Gang of Four-styled post-punk, "tribal" found-percussion workouts, video game squelches, Justice-like electro bombast, vocals that veer from mildly aggro screaming to sweet pop/R&B crooning, and copious amounts of glam metal riffage (shades of the Darkness), among other things. With so much structural and stylistic fragmentation, it's a wonder that the album flows as smoothly and hangs together as well as it does — much credit is due, very likely, to producer Erol Alkan for helping to rein in and give shape to the band's youthful creative abandon, which from the sound of things could easily have resulted in an indulgent mess. Truth be told, it's still a bit of a mess, but it's a glorious and galvanizing one: a convoluted construction crammed with so many immediately gratifying moments that it takes multiple listens to extricate them all — in other words, enough instant pleasures to easily outweigh its occasional grating, overreaching, and faltering. The only question remaining is whether or not you have the energy to keep up with them. ~ K. Ross Hoffman, Rovi