Customer Reviews

Glory Bumps

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Noisier and more expansive than Cormorant, Glory Bumps is a CD to play loud while jumping around. The actinic buzz and tidal power of Oil and Gold; the warm ultraviolet glow and demonic playfulness of Big Night Music; all wrapped up with a mordant sophistication like a tongue-in-cheek undertaker. Some notable standouts for me: "Hooray for Everything" gets things rolling with a brazen paean to shenanigans of all kinds; "The Bride Stripped Bare" and "Mahalia" are a pair of hymns to dangerous angels; "Amaryllis in the Sprawl" is an urban meditation reminiscent of "Psycho Drift" on but haunted by Andrews' side project "Illuminati"; and the title track is... well, just imagine a demonic man with a shaved head as a door-to-door Rapture-obsessed evangelist, and you've got the picture there. A fine entry into the Shriekback canon...

All you really have to say to someone who appreciated Shriekback in their prime (mid-80's) is, this really does sound like prime-grade stuff. You could have told me this was recorded between "Oil and Gold" and "Big Night Music". Clearly these guys remember exactly how they made the perfect tracks on those records, and can do it at will - not that these songs are duplicates of those, but the perfection of that earlier sound is still in evidence in service of these songs. I will always miss original members Carl Marsh and David Allen, but their absense is compensated for here by a really great set of drum tracks, and a great assortment of the type of strange analogue sounds that this band was founded on the basis of.

Good songs with traction recorded brilliantly. I can't say enough about it. Cream rising to the top.

Five songs on this offering hearken back to the style of classic Shriekback (think Oil and Gold, Big Night Music, etc.), while the rest is the dissonant clamour which pervades Cormorant. I like both styles, actually, but admit to having a warm place in my soul for the old and familiar.

I give my highest ratings to the following tracks: Bittersweet, Amaryllis in the Sprawl, Yarg 7, Mahalia, and Hooray for Everything. I do hope we hear more like these in the future.

It's a surprising turn of events following the languid Cormorant release of 2005, Glory Bumps is a rollicking, bouncy good time. I mean they even brought the drummer back! Glory Bumps reminds me most of Oil and Gold, when Shriekback were at their peak (such as it was). Always obscure, the lyrics are strong (and there are lots and lots of them).

This is a wonderful album for anyone even tangentially interested in Shriekback. Without question, their best work since Big Night Music (which is saying something as they have never really laid a total egg in my humble opinion). For fans of '80's era Shriekback, this album is essential. For fans of atmospheric, dark and absurdist music, you have found it.