Upset The Rhythm
Waiting there patiently for over thirty years, Normil Hawaiians‘ third album Return Of The Ranters finally got the airing it deserved in late 2015, thanks to Upset The Rhythm. An act that kick started a re-issue campaign to get all their recordings back into print, finally re-addressing the group’s bad luck story with a vengeance.
I missed out on
Return Of The Ranters first time round, but after taking in the first and second treasure trove of ideas, it was inevitable that the journey needed to be completed. And what an amazing finale this album makes. Right from the offset, “Sianne Don’t Work In A Factory” grabs you in stereo oddness and glorious discord, violins (that re-kindle the likes of
John Cale’s
Velvet Underground days) scribbling the mind, slipping its skin to reveal this lovely indie tune, skiffling a bowed
sinew and palmed tabla overtaken in the over-saturated industrial scrunch of an imaginary production-line. Yeah, as first tastes go, this a monumental one.
As with their previous two albums,
What’s Going On? and
More Wealth Than Money, there’s something partisan and defiantly independent about the sprawling deliberateness of the tracks here. The jolting thistles, droning tonals and barely-there vocals that muddy the waters, the beguiling melt of those soft centres that just gush forth. That dreamy sincerity and harmonic splendour of “The History Of Coal”,
a spidering simplicity of lilting shapes and blurry vocals that hits the spot as the hazy embrace of a distant summers day is re-ignited amongst its jangly accents.
These descriptive sonics just leap from the page with originality, ripe with dissension, pointing the political bone towards bitter realities. The acoustic immediacy and soft chorals of “Slums Still Stand” furnishing a weary delivery that throws light on austerities bite, the shadow of Margaret Thatcher’s breadline Britain depressingly still clinging on too many years later. “The Battle Of Stonehenge” is a de-cantered revolt for a peaceful gathering brutally put down by the police, splintering news reports shimmer-shooting the blue-hued corners and fracturing folk-fall as refracted frets leap the violin’s rub – that John Heartfield-like black and white cover subtly criticising consumer culture as the tiny silhouette of the monument inks the distance.
Loving all these post-punk rythmics and off-kilter colourings, with “Search For Um Gris” blooming with experimental flavours cracking open a chart-friendly addictive that would have (and more importantly still does) rival their contemporaries, riding the crest of kicked-to-fuck drums, azure swallowing its own terminal glide. “Sléibhte Macalla”’s echoed tenderness and the slow oozing “Two Daughters” aesthetic seancing its own flame’s flutter while “Piton De La Fournaise” has a
Satie-like music box serenading an active volcano. This peppers plenty, then “Steam”’s recoil /
percussive weirdness and mumbled poetry strikes you with its killer insistence and avant angles. “The air is still, the fire is blazing, untold stories in the coals”, go the lyrics as we are treated to a divine wah-roasting.
It’s a wonder that the album’s sprawling ten-minute “Mouldwarp” throws higher in a shivering burn of barely audible vocals and flinty incendiaries, sucking you in as screaming gasps wrap themselves round shooting guitar acidics, and the whole shebang is suddenly plunge-pooled into grainy, primitive electronics and abstract cries. Fucking incredible, pioneering stuff that the last song “The Fog” grapple-hooks with blinding modernity.
Can’t believe I haven’t heard of this group until a few years ago; and good on you
Upset The Rhythm for throwing the whole of their catalogue back into the world.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
Waiting there patiently for over thirty years, Normil Hawaiians‘ third album Return Of The Ranters finally got the airing it deserved in late 2015, thanks to Upset The Rhythm. An act that kick started a re-issue campaign to get all their recordings back into print, finally re-addressing the group’s bad luck story with a vengeance.
