Albums

Colourmusic - f, monday, orange, february, venus, lunatic, 1 or 13

Owain Paciuszko 29/12/2008

Rating: 5/5

I've been a huge fan of Colourmusic for quite some time now and have at long last got my mitts on their debut LP (Thanks Mum!), which came out in America mid-August and have to hoot off about it as it is (if we count all releases released across the entire world) my favourite album of 2008, or (if we count releases hopefully released in the UK in 2009) a strong contender for my favourite album of 2009 before the year has even started.

Colourmusic make music reminiscent of (broadly) The Beta Band by way of The Polyphonic Spree, The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev and a hippy love cult. Opening with a song that asks 'Hey, how are you?' and seems to be geuine in its interest this is both a smart, wry and intelligent record as well as being honestly, euphorically feelgood in its life-affirming, sing-a-long buoyance. Put In A Little Gas switches from nursery rhyme to a chugging fireball of energy with fist-pumping, head-nodding, toe-tapping glee.

Its five members share the collective persona of Roy G. Biv and make music allegedly spectrum-inspired (that's colours not computers), and there is a delightfully simplistic accessibility to the songs here (such as the raggedy, stomp of The Gospel Song) that gives way to unleash a kaleidoscope of imagination and invention. I can't imagine how somebody could listen to Spring Song and not become swept along in its weird, psychedelic fanfare of nonsense and magic, played over a tune that sounds like a borderline insane parade of fairytale folk.

This is one of those records where I want to prattle on and on about every single track whilst at the same time want to say nothing and hope you investigate it for yourself and find it as barmy, uplifting and essential as I do. With this release Colourmusic assert themselves as an underground force that will hopefully erupt into the alternative-consciousness and dominate the year with the same force-majeur and word-of-mouth as Arcade Fire.

Yes! is a track that deserves to be bellowed out by a festival crowd with the pseudo-self-help lyrics 'Everything I am is everything I do, everything I love is everything I am...' already given suitable grandeur on this record's new, beefier mix with guitars howling and announcing the track as a machine-mantra for modern living. Or there's the dreamy, romantic chant of 'She thinks she loves me, I think I love her, we think we love each other.' of Winter Song, this record is filled with sentiments and arrangments that make me smile as if some sort of subliminal post-hypnotic suggestion were contained within the track.

I love this record, and the only reason I end this review now is through fear of hyperbole, but I recommend that you bend your ear in the direction of Colourmusic for they are a unique, strange and exciting bunch of chaps.