Any album that opens with a song called ‘Introduction’ is saying something. Not a lot maybe. But something all the same. You see with Django Django its all about the simplicity, every element of each song feels balanced, considered and perfectly weighted. There are no unnecessary frills, pointless solos, wordy lyrics or wasted tracks. Each piece of this 13 track album fits in its place without snagging on anything else. As an exercise in track listing alone it’s a masterpiece.
As an album its surprisingly mellow. After hearing early releases ‘Default’ and ‘Wor’ we were expecting something slightly more frantic but the guys have actually pushed the murky elements of their sound forward. There’s even a slightly ominous feel to some of the tracks, an uneasy edge to the bounding gait delivered by the percussion. A promise of rain to come after the blasting blue-sky sounds of ‘Default’. It’s hard not to find this slightly off-putting at first. After all we fell in love with the band on the basis of those early over-eager tracks. After a while though the snaking melodies of the darker tunes begin to worm their way into your headphones. There’s something deeply satisfying about the sound. There’s a sultry edge to it, a sense of the unknown and the sensuous. ‘Skies over Cairo’ feels like the murky underbelly of the Lp, a twisting delve into some slightly seedy neighbourhood. It’s certainly no Walk Like An Egyptian.
Lyrically the record would be easy to dismiss on its simplicity. There are very few wasted syllables and the verses come in with an almost shamanistic fluency. There’s a feel of playground-chanting about it all. In fact the lyrics have more in common with these chants than any sort of traditional songwriting. Tracks like ‘Hail Bop’ (Hail Bop = Rain Dance geddit?) and Firewater seem to directly reference these tribal undertones in a way that matches the rhythms of both guitars and drums hugely satisfyingly. They’re songs designed for dancing around the fire rather than arena adoration and in that difference Django Django have set themselves apart from the Hordes. A visceral, pounding anomaly it might just be the best British debut you’ll hear this year.
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