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(2024) India Electric Co - Pomegranate [FLAC]
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Four years in the making, India Electric Co. (Cole Stacey and Joseph O’Keefe) take a giant leap forward with Pomegranate, a highly textured and musically adventurous fifth full-length album. They describe the title track opener as “Fresh beginnings that tell the varied and opposing ties that bind myths and symbolism, of loyalty and change, wanting more without losing what you have, ambition and prosperity”, a description that would also seem an apt summation of the album, embracing as it does a choppy jazzy percussive groove, synths and embellished by fiddle and keys as Cole sings “what matters here/Is what we’ve got/Instead of what is missing”. Hollow drums provide the foundation for the jittery Embers as the staccato vocals speak to global decay (“Can’t help if we are melted/Burnt out/Can’t help if we are toxic”) and getting out of the way (“Hey you losing the cause/Run away/Coz you’re not in the future”) if you can’t be part of the push to survive (“Try to remember/And hold on whatever it takes/What goes/Will come again”). The edgy guitar chords were inspired by Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# minor.
After The Flood is a calmer affair, built around circling piano motifs emulated by the guitars, a less obtuse Radiohead meets Peter Gabriel shades that again addresses resilience and better days (“I was standing in the rain/Thinking this won’t last/I’ll be standing in the rain/In the photographs… And for the first time/After the flood/I can see the sun rise”) as the instrumentation builds and swirls behind the vocals, fiddle soaring amid the clouds of keyboards before it all suddenly fades. More specifically, nodding to Radiohead, repeated drum patterns underpin the shifting keyboards and tempo of What Keeps You and its stream-of-consciousness lyrics about moving forward (“What’s needed is a little luck/To take the heat off the future…there’s a map on the wall/That’s stuck in the past life/It’s ok to tear it up/We wanna keep alive/What we’re trying to lose… What keeps you staring out at night?/What keeps you there?”) as glissando strings, twanged guitars, and distorted accordions build to the finale. A pulsating drum and bass dubstep, discordant tremolo piano stabs, and offbeat drums afford a feel of paranoia to Sirens, complementing lines like “Who shot an arrow in the air/Who picked the target out/Those one-way conversations/There hanging out to dry” and the repeated refrain “We don’t see eye to eye.” The track sounds like a neurotic Talk Talk as it gathers to a discordant climax.
A repeating bubbling percussive pizzicato violin and Moog motif with rhythmic Latin tinges provide the itchiness to Balancing Act, a number described as about censorship and the destruction it brings (“All the muddy waters/Of all the lost and found/I just imagined that/there’s more to it/Than all this heavy traffic”) but, again the lyrics create protean impressions (“lost property of facts/All the muddy waters/Of all the lost and found”) rather than clear semantic images. Taking inspiration from American electronic pop duo Sylvan Esso, Better Unsaid is almost poppy as Moog bass interacts with the acoustic instruments on a song about communication “on the outside looking in,” where “Some things are better unsaid,” ending with the inspired line “out of sight isn’t out of hand.” Evoking an Indian texture, with synths emulating tablas to create tension and resolution around the shifting chords, minimal violin and piano giving way to mournful strings, Patterns muses on the nature of existence (“You said we’re only patterns/(And) that’s what really matters/And if it ever falls apart/(It’s) the only thing we’ll ever be/Running in circles/Walking into the mazes/And melting away”).
Given the lyrics generally don’t make for easy interpretation, even when the notes offer direction (Glass Houses, for example, is about hypocrisy –“Bubbled wrapped up in apathy/Looking out, like your neighbour’s an enemy/Building walls round to prop up a legacy”- a theme that runs throughout the album), they might perhaps be considered as part of the aural soundscape, triggering ideas and impressions rather than direct meaning. This allows the senses to be surrounded by the musical shapes, at times skittering like mice as on the Latin, almost carnival rhythms of Cascade, inspired by Cape Verdean singer Cesária Evora’s Angola with its piano, guitar fiddle and accordion, or surfing the handclaps percussion and pulsing keyboard notes of Boat Beneath The Sky based on the Lewis Carrol poem about growing up and how nothing stays the same (“is it only wonderlands that can stay in the past”), at others slow and moodier such as The Gaps with its soulful chords, cascading frills and flowing guitars, or the jazzy late night piano and violins of Fancy Free with its allusion to the Persephone underworld myth (“Unsure, caught in the middle of two worlds”) in which pomegranates figure extensively. It closes with the gorgeous piano ballad Face To The Sun, their own early hours ebb tide (“It’s later than evening/The party’s over/Nothing left here to say”), Cole’s comforting vocal at its most intimate and warm on the song’s triumphant call for positivity encapsulated in a quote borrowed from Helen Keller – “Keep your face to the sun/You’ll not see the shadows”.
They stepped away from the folk path on which they first embarked long ago, embracing electronics and World Music influences to weave their intricate, complex and intoxicating musical webs. Just as in Ancient Greece and Rome, the pomegranate and its fleshy red pulp symbolised death and regeneration; the album has a framework of contrasts and shifting states; bite deep, the seeds within are glistening jewels. — Review by Mike Davies on klofmag.com
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