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IOE AIE – SHELLS (DDC Music)
The band name looks like something your untrustworthy uncle would try to play in Scrabble – “But it’s the rutting call of the Kenyan ice otter!” – though it stands for It’s Only Ever Autumn In England. Climate scientists might refute this assertion, but it’s typical of the wry poetic chilliness of this new trio, featuring occasional Foals collaborator Kit Montieth. Their debut album Shells is an intoxicating collection of crepuscular techno tracks intertwined with sententiously intoned vocals, like an introspective, slightly paranoid Underworld. Opener ‘Four Quarters’ sets the tone by coupling knotty, pun-laden lines with a misty version of a club banger, as if Faithless had been formed by Faber & Faber editors, with a hypnotic high-speed train rhythm only emphasising an air of hollow sadness (Trans-Europe Depressed, anyone?).
Elsewhere there is almost a whiff of oiled EBM leather to ‘Divide’, a soupy late Orb digidub haze to ‘The Pacific’, and a dizzying synth build worthy of Luke Slater to the second half of ‘Autumn In England’, but perhaps ‘18’ will cause the biggest waves, a wryly mournful coming-of-age magic realist narrative delivered over a relentlessly snaking ostinato, like a rave comedown version of writer Kirk Lake’s experiments in sonic storytelling. The final track, ‘Cities & Memory’, proffers a funkier samba-like rhythm and global travelogue lyrics, but it’s not urbane windswept euphoria that will bring you back to this excellent album, but the melancholic mystery at its secret heart: dark autumn nights are eternal, and mellow fruitfulness is off the menu.
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