Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 29/01/07
Label: 679 Recordings

Last summer, inside the sweaty confines of London's Barfly: about eight or nine Earlies are sardined onto a knee-high stage and previewing songs from their yet-to-be-released second album before a partisan, but slightly bemused, crowd. Strange time signatures abound; along with off-hand horn parps and all sorts of retro Delia Derbyshire electronic nonsense. On several occasions a big-lunged swell of harmony threatens to raise the entire building, and then we descend into a prolonged period of kling klang noodling. Significantly, keyboardist Christian Madden half jokes that this new prog rock reinvention should see the band dispatched with their collective P45s.

Six months later, and you can see his point. "The Enemy Chorus" is a brilliant multi-layered piece of work, but one that would be much more at home in the bearded nether regions of 1973. Like an aural equivalent of BBC TV's "Life On Mars", where hapless detective John Simm is teleported back to the hard knock world of "The Sweeny", this is an album that finds its makers in an era that time forgot. Frequently summoning forth images of Rick Wakeman and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, how this ever got a green light from a major label in 2007 is, quite frankly, baffling. Book-ended by a marriage of primitive analogue soundscapes and a military tattoo ("No Love In Your Heart") and a full-on sitar wig-out ("Breaking Point") it has 'number 73 with a bullet' written all over it.

None of which is to say that, as free-flowing piece of work, it isn't any good. Whereas their debut album, 2004's "These Were…", was constructed, quite literally, in a state of geographical detachment (half the band's creative force being based in Texas, the other two in Burnley), "The Enemy Chorus" strides confidently like a well-oiled machine. It has a sense of purpose. And where previously their heads were in the crowds, this time round the odd and ominous instrumentation underpins a bleak world view. Titles like "Burn The Liars", "Bad Is As Bad Does" and "Broken" allude to war, neo-conservatism and death.

Importantly too, beneath the sonic overload, the beating of a human heart is always perceptible. "The Ground We Walk On" is a gorgeous ache of acoustic longing, "Gone For The Most Part" walks the same walk as late-'60s jazz experimentalist David Axelrod and "When The Wind Blows" concludes proceedings with a Beatle-ish sense of songcraft. Brandon Carr's vocals frequently sound like a lone voice bobbing on a sea of madness, but with all ropes cut free, The Earlies are now traversing environments that others would be too fearful to risk.

Unfortunately, in this day and age, you can't imagine such a strategy will win them a whole legion of new converts. But what is assured is that, however much it draws inspiration from the past, "The Enemy Chorus" will be thrilling listeners of the future in 30 years from now. A great lost album in the making.

    by Adam Webb