Nuclear Device?

This is one of those few reviews for which I have an email from the performers, thanking me for the review; not really because I said nice things, but because it was clear I'd listened to the thing. Sad, really, that this needs commenting on, wouldn't you say?

FAMILY MACHINE – YOU ARE THE FAMILY MACHINE (Alcopop)



People generally don’t listen to lyrics. At least not to the verses. Elvis Costello tells stories of late 80’s parents requesting his hit “Veronica” on the radio to celebrate their little princess’ birthday, when it’s actually about Elvis’ Mum going nutty in a nursing home. Ten years later there’s the tale of married couples spinning Baby Bird’s “You’re Gorgeous” at their wedding, despite the fact that even a cursory listen to the seedy storyline would seem to supply a perfectly good reason not to use it as your first dance. (Another being, of course, that it’s shit.)

We can imagine something similar happening to Family Machine’s greatest song, “Flowers By The Roadside”, in which intelligent lyrics probe society’s rituals of remembrance atop one of the catchiest melodies ever produced in Oxford. It even has a bloody whistling break. Is Family Machine - we know it looks stupid without a definite article in front, but that’s how it’s written on the sleeve, and we’re nothing if not anal about stuff like that – trying to smuggle mournful themes into our heads in the disguise of gorgeous pop music? If so, they do a very good job of the disguising: half of this album is heart-breaking melancholy, and the other half is meaningless fluff fun, best seen in “The Do Song”, a nonsensical pop romp which is like a cross between The Wannadies and Francis Lai’s theme to Un Homme & Une Femme.

Opener “Ko Tao” sets the tone, with a lightweight fuzz guitar bounce that recalls T Rex at their least serious. Before we know it, however, we’re immersed in the banjo plucking simplicity of “Burn Like Stars” or the resigned sadness of “Paving Stone Monsters”, which is heart-breaking even though we’re not sure precisely what these ever-present monsters symbolise. Even “Got It Made” undercuts its sampladelic Ninja Tune spy theme air with a widescreen pathos coda that could have come from Ennio Morricone’s most tear-jerking drawer. In fact, it’s only “Lethal Drugs Cocktail” that spoils the mood, coming off as too deliberately matey, like a desperate uncle making bad jokes at a wedding (though we’ll laugh at anything to drown out Baby Bird).

“Did You Leave” is perhaps a summation of the whole album, building an elegiac mood with heavily reverbed melody lines only to suddenly subsume it in bubbly “Ba ba ba” backing vocals. Except that the sadness never quite disappears, even as the grins surface. Maybe Family Machine is saying that melancholia is an undercurrent in even our happiest moments; or maybe the point is that even despair can have a tinge of happiness – it’s joyous to be alive and feel something, even if it’s only misery. Concluding the record with an uncredited lofi instrumental probably indicates that we’re not encouraged to reach definite conclusions about such things.

Beyond all this philosophising, You Are The Family Machine is simply a fantastic relaxed album of semi-acoustic pop, that can make you dance on the tables downing sangria one minute, and slump weeping into your whisky the next. Highly recommended.