Dark Island

Pram are the kind of band you wouldn’t really want to meet on a dark night. On the surface, their off-kilter melodies and swirling arrangements verge on something approaching pop, but delve beneath the surface and you can almost glimpse the yellow teeth and black nails of something dark, grinning and nightmarish clawing to get out. I love ’em.

Opener ‘Track Of The Cat’ is gorgeous, an instrumental journey that takes you through the hurly burly of the fairground and almost into the mariachi territory of Calexico: New Mexico via Bognor Regis, if you like. The smoky jazz of ‘Peepshow’ conjures up visions of sleazy shenanigans moreso than ‘Kiss Me Quik’ hats, while ‘Sirocco’ takes us once more into the desert, but there’s not much heat nor comfort to be found under this particular sun. ‘Penny Arcade’ drags us even deeper into their twisted universe, and we have to trust Pram to direct us, as there’s “no guidebook to the world of dreams”.

Both ‘The Pawnbroker’ and ‘Paper Hats’ are darkly impressive; ‘The Archivist’ analyses the transience of all things; the beautiful ‘Goodbye’ reflects on the nature of leaving something or someone behind; and the closing ‘Distant Islands’ examines human beings’ constant failure to communicate with each other, despite our best efforts.

Part dissection of a normal, everyday relationship, part snapshot of a seaside village in the depths of winter, Dark Island is a mind-bendingly bizarre but nonetheless beautiful work.