WE WERE POSIEDON – Turn Back The Clocks CD-EP
Debut offering from Dundee band with a seven-track offering that's essentially almost like a concept EP with one track consisting of six parts.
The EP opens with a rather eerie “Part 1” where descending bass chords and foggy piano notes herald the arrival of a mellotron-like choir in the background as the vocals announce in a kind of uncaring monotone harmony that “the circus is falling” and the effect is both engaging and disconcerting. Out of this emerges cascading guitar notes as the choir fades, the piano expands its strength, and the two ripple together, then die. From here, the band crunches in with “Le Cirque” as thumping drums and thudding bass lay the foundations for the two guitars to chime and grunge-riff simultaneously. As the bite drops back, the higher register vocalist enters to a background of lurching rhythms, electronic squalls from the guitar, deep riffs and chiming leads. As this stretches out, so the vocalist becomes multi-tracked and this sea of harmonies expands as the band flares out in a multitude of directions, so buys it's hard to keep up with everything that's going on. Then as they drop back to the next bit – there's very little split into what you'd call verse or chorus – things heat up even further with vocals, guitars and rhythm section splintering and riffing and flying in every way upwards, the intensity increasing, falling, increasing once more only different then changing path altogether as the guitar and bass settle into this cyclical groove, joined by the drums as the bass fuzzes and growls, the guitar riffs and chimes, another guitar introduces an electronic whirlwind undercurrent then it all suddenly drives back into this lurching rhythm that dives towards an abrupt finish.
One track in and you already know two things – this is different from anything else you've heard before and the band are so far removed from “normal” commercial indie, you wonder how they thought all this up in the first place. “Me My Self And You” continues what you've already discovered – a world of lurching, marching, driving rhythms that are prone to halting at any given moment, a sea of guitars that ring out, chime, delicately play and ferociously riff, and vocals that bite, fly, harmonise and stretch out in acres of anguish and towers of soaring multi-tracked wonderment, all set to an arrangement with more twists and turns than Hampton Court Maze – you need at least three listens just to take in everything that's going on, and you have to take your hat off to a band who can make something this complex sound so accessible. “Roots” comes in on a shimmering set of guitar chords as the bass and clattering percussion enter, joined by a more sonorous second guitar, as it all then accelerates and the vocalist snaps in accompanied by wordless harmonies as the song mixes the delicacy of the guitars, the rhythmic foundations and the bite of the singing. The delicate guitar moves upfront and stutters only then for the two guitar to provide a prickly sea of leads like Thin Lizzy with St Vitus Dance only slower. As you might gather, all this flares out, powers ahead, expands, drives, gets lost in more layers than you can count and surges from the speakers to a mighty finale.
The title track continues all this and adds even more to the melting pot – an ocean of orchestral synthesizer, bouncing drums, high-flying impassioned wordless harmonies – but when all of the hypnotic splendour ends and the band power out into this massive attack of guitar riffs, pummelling bass, crunchy drumming, towering treated guitar leads and vocals that are positively lost in the maelstrom, yet still there, the effect is just jaw-dropping. Finally, there's “Part 2” as the lone anguish of the vocals are accompanied by resonant piano and distant voices for just a few seconds, then it ends – as strangely as it all began.
As an EP, it's different – for sure – bears little relation to anything else you've heard, is busier than Alan Sugar's empire, yet oddly enough, the more you listen to it, the more it gives back and you do find yourself caught up in their world, taking more in with every play and ultimately loving the thing.