In a parallel universe this record would be yet another smash hit from the excellent Popical Island label. Sadly in this godless universe, the people of Popical Island do not have the Motownesque reputation as pop kingmakers that they deserve (at a guess I’d say that this has something to do with Goldman Sachs).
The Walpurgis Family produce beautiful, star-gazing, melodically-charged indie pop which, when uptempo, is undercut by melodic melancholy and, when downtempo, is uplifted by optimistically bouncy bass-lines. This is used to underpin lyrics about real lives. They use soccer as a metaphor for emotional development in one song (‘Simon Smiles’), drop melancholic references to pop culture and Dublin geography in another (the excellent ‘Jurassic Park’), and explain the practicalities of a break-up for a cohabiting couple (on ‘Landlord’).
The bigger productions feature brass, woodwind, glockenspiels and organs interwoven with melody-line plucking electric guitars, counter-melody plucking basses and subtly deployed carefully punctuating drum patterns. Sometimes this combination of instruments is used to tastefully buffer the unassuming, unaffected and imperfectly perfect lead vocals, sometimes the elements are all woven together into joyously discordant outros. At other times their songs are stripped down to bare and beautiful guitar and drums as on the love-lorn ‘Little Catherine.’
The Walpurgis Family are cut from the same cloth as bands like The Go Betweens and Belle & Sebastian (that cloth, if you’re wondering, is corduroy). This doesn’t mean that they are derivative in any way. It just means that they’re comfortable in their sonic skins and actually have something to say about life. Wonderful stuff.