Review
Volcano!
Paperwork

Now, I am an extremely misanthropic individual. I generally enjoy disliking things (and people) almost as much as I enjoy liking them. There is a perverse pleasure in mild hatred, a smug sense of self-justification when you can hover above the morons of this world and curl your lip in distaste at their floundering attempts at humanity. When this is applied to music, the aforementioned pleasure is diluted only by the knowledge that it is unlikely I will ever be in the position to actually elbow drop every member of The Fratellis repeatedly.

However, there is nothing quite so frustrating as disliking things that you know have merit to them. There's a slippery feeling that you've missed something, that you're not in on the joke. That said, there is a secret conspiracy somewhere within the Volcano! camp to frustrate me by producing respectable and interesting musical output that I really can't get along with.

To be fair to my fragile ears, the majority of Paperwork will be obtuse to most listeners. A not-entirely-melded clash of slightly soulful indie guitar with clattering drumwork and bouncing bass does not make for chart-friendly listening, and while the vocals could be compared to the slightly more easy-listening qualities of Matt Bellamy it would be a lazy comparison. The vocals center the chaotic mix of twitching guitars and quasi-free-jazz percussion, flowing overhead with distinctly more melody than the instrumentation like a silken stream of consciousness, bubbling over with quirk.

For this listener it never quite gels consistently, but I suspect that the band have intended this to be so. If there's one thing this album hammers home it is that the music has been constructed to be precisely the way it is it's simply not a kind of songcraft that a musician can just fall into. Technically much of it is excellent. Particularly, I can certainly appreciate that this style of drumming requires a lot of expertise and control. The problem is that it still sounds like a kit falling down a long set of stairs to me.

And I suppose that is the gist of this review. This is music I can respect, but not enjoy. That's not a wholesale judgment. There are certainly glimpses of a more personally appealing side over the course of the album early highlight "Africa Just Wants To Have Fun" and a midsection double whammy of the alterno-pop tinged "Slow Jam" and gentler meanderings of "'78 Oil Crisis" stand out significantly as songs that could break the band through to a different audience and quite possibly to being a completely different style of band. But the sense of confident identity throughout Paperwork shows that this is probably the furthest thing from the collective brains of Volcano!.

To be succinct, I was reminded throughout the record of a quote from the late, great Tony Wilson. When commenting on jazz, he defined it as the only genre of music enjoyed more by the musicians than the audience. Whether that stands as detriment or endorsement is probably a very subjective call.