Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 27/02/06
Label: 4AD

Katrina Ford, vocalist and percussionist with Celebration, speaks of wanting to summon through her work what's known in Spanish as "la duende." Most often referred to in relation to flamenco, it's virtually untranslatable, but incorporates the idea of the spirit and of demons, the artistic muse, aesthetic instinct and (vital, this) complete absorption by the creative process to the point where the conscious, thinking self has been all but obliterated.

The Brooklyn trio might not convey quite that level of in-the-moment abandonment on their debut album, but "Celebration" entirely justifies the title, while simultaneously darkening its bedrock euphoria with hints of the general madness, badness and dangerousness that are necessarily the flipside of any high. It's a dizzyingly impressive debut, the result of a high-school collaboration between Ford and Sean Antanaitis, who plays guitars, bass (Moog and synth), organs, piano accordion, Theremin, customised "guitorgan" and percussion - in other words, everything except drums (that's David Bergander's job).

It's an album with "made in NYC" stamped clearly on it. Tracks such as "New Skin", "Foxes" and "Stars" twitch with the same punk-funk energy as Radio 4 and another band with physical exhilaration at the heart of their clattering, percussive force, The Rapture. Produced by David Andrew Sitek of TV On The Radio (and featuring that band's vocalist Tunde Adebimpe, among other guests), "Celebration" also recalls the ecstatic pop of The Arcade Fire - especially in "Good Ship", whose see-sawing accordion motif practically induces motion sickness - while "Tonight" appropriates The Make-Up's visceral gospel-punk.

There's political comment, too, on "War", the first song out of the traps, where Ford declaims, "I will resist! I do insist! You don't enlist…no!" Her strikingly expressive vocal is central to Celebration's impact. Able to shift from a velveteen croon to an anguished bark or a delirious whoop in one swoop, she's such a dead ringer for The Rapture's Luke Jenner that it's hard to believe it's a woman's voice you're hearing.

There are, of course, notes of softness and vulnerability alongside the strength and confidence of "Celebration": the last-twirl-in-a-doomed-dancehall sadness that cuts through "Diamonds"; the saxophone on "Ancient Animals", which dramatically suggests the bleating of a whale whose calf is lost at sea; and Ford's lovelorn, keening tone on "Holiday", but it's the record's physical vigour and dizzying joie de vivre which most impress.

Whatever the exact nature of the mysterious duende, Celebration have certainly connected with it.

    by Sharon O'Connell