Metropolis
Two years in the making and a pre-fortieth anniversary celebration taster of live things to come, Angel In The Detail finds the sonic trio of The Silverman, Erik Drost and Edward Ka-Spel on good form.
You’d hardly think the Legendary Pink Dots have been around for four decades by the minty freshness that bleeds through the speakers. The fresh-faced “Happy Birthday Mr President” hits you first, its choppy waters barbed in sparking illuminations of Spanish guitar, a diced dynamo kicking you into touch with a jubilant Ka-Spel, who surfs the waves with a lurid glow. That theatrical fervour that surrounds “Double Double”’s slow-motion incisiveness sees a cloud-floating Ka-spel stating, “When it all gets ugly down there, I’ll be blowing bubbles” as the music around him apple-bobs a slinky serenade.
“Junkyard”’s ‘Just remain, remain” choral ambience (an anti-Brexit dig, perhaps?) and jousting dynamics are belayed by despicable truths. The wizard’s always been fond of turning the world’s wrongs into his playthings, and here he insists, “It’s set in stone”, adding “A solemn promise for the precious few / Who shuffle cards and wipe us off the soles of their new shoes” as the music behind remains oblivious, frothing over in poppy blisters. Then “Itchycoo Shark / Isle Of Sighs” introduces that familiar harpsichord nocturne that’s haunted many a Pink Dots classic over the years, a fertile environment for the introspective narrator to pour out the contents of his mind like a Las Vegas slot-machine, words that drag you closer to this comedy of errors that defines us as human. The ravey radials of “Neon Calculators” are reflected in the spiky event horizons of the album artwork. It’s a real Giorgio Moroder riot of pulsing disco and rattly inflection, and probably one of my favourites on the album as well as the oddness of “My Land / Parallels”. Edward’s words on both are a lyrical lycra of inquiring imagery shredding in curling hypnotics, the former kicking chaotically into a tasty finale. The humorous robotics that is “Maid To Measure”‘s sex doll musings shares a lot with the fruitful frolic of The Whispering Wall‘s “Soft Toy”. “Say hi now to your blushing bride” as Kraftwerkian shivers creep over the cutesy canvas, and the sound of whirring malfunction fills your imagination with messy disaster.No matter how curious the album’s neural pathways become, a weird anticipation stalks these tracks. The stippled grasslands of “Mantis” seem combed in this, and as the rich ambience is stripped back to a strummed backing for “The Photographer”, you seem to hang on Ka-Spel’s every word. The flames of well-placed descriptives burning on in there as the expanding negatives become riddled with lush multiples, their cinematic fragments and shifting perspectives playing on your mind as you constantly re-arrange the jigsaw. The snare that salutes its demise is like the hope of a condemned man shallowed in silence.
The incredible eleven-minute epic of “Red Flag” closes the experience in a Chemical Playschool-esque vibe that unlocks its secrets in slow saturation. The poetry of a woman’s voice all murmuring petroleum, the track suddenly strutting the attention like a gaudy peacock full of mutating colour and bendy perceptions. An inkling of moral defeat, a taste of loss kicking out on an optimistic backdrop. “Will somebody remind me why I’m here”, he goes, while the tropicalia is glimmer-struck in poltergeist activity.I’m glad to report the experiment continues as strong as ever, and the ten tracks on Angel In The Detail effortlessly state that there’s plenty more yet where that came from.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
