Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 25/07/05
Label: Regal/Capitol

So comprehensively has the sound of twitchy white funk swept the land that it's as if St Vitus's has replaced the Morris as our national dance and the trickledown effect from Franz Ferdinand's success means that A&R men are still being dispatched to provincial hellholes to find bands obsessed with Gang Of Four, Talking Heads and Orange Juice. If you can coast to success on a well-trodden path, seems to be the attitude, why sweat it carving your own?

In which case, loud hosannahs and the casting of palm fronds at feet should greet the debut LP from five-piece Clor. Their nervy sonic disposition sees them straddling 80s punk-funk, new-wave and dance, yet they're not awkward mutants struggling to find their own identity, but a mercurial, multi-tentacled talent centre with its own definition of pop music.

It's not that you can't tell where Clor are coming from (south London, actually), but that their crib sheets - Gang Of Four, Kraftwerk, Devo, Gary Numan, Prince and New Order - have been so thoroughly reshuffled. "Clor" both hums with familiarity and bristles with strangeness, heading every one of its fantastically tuneful tracks off at the pass before predictability sets in. Attempts to shake a leg may result in plaster casts all round, but there's nothing here that couldn't race into the charts, given half a chance.

Opener "Good Stuff" starts with a proggy flourish before drums of a military crispness begin their strut, woogly keys swing in and then vocalist Barry Dobbin lets loose his strangulated, curiously affecting falsetto flutter. It's prime Blur without the Britpop blather, driven into the arms of Yes and Devo. "Outlines" is a jerkily graceful collision between Kraftwerk and XTC, recent single "Love + Pain" boasts a chorus so rabidly infectious it should come with a prescription for antibiotics, but "Gifted" and the wigged-out "Stuck In A Tight Spot" suggest Pavement circa "Wowee Zowee", the latter with a side serving of Silver Apples.

The deliciously downbeat "Dangerzone" breathes new life into death disco by blending New Order with Bowie, "Magic Touch" is minimal, Prince-ly funk and Television's tautness holds "Making You All Mine" in shape. Soft, psychedelic closer "Goodbye" proves that Clor can do sweetly reflective, too, if they choose.

"Each of us is special in our own unique way," warbles Dobbin on "Outlines", but he's too modest by half. This debut sets the newcomers head and shoulders above the neo-Britpop pack and, if there's any justice, should make Clor-abiding citizens of us all before the year's out.

    by Sharon O'Connell