War Stories is a much more rock-influenced album than previous Unkle outings, with guest collaborators this time round including Josh Homme, The Duke Spirit and The Cult’s Ian Astbury. It also features the debut vocal performance of Unkle mainman James Lavelle, who sings over the Black Rebel Motorcyle Club-like bluesy hum of ‘Hold My Hand’.
Homme brings characteristic verve and energy to the pulsating ‘Restless’, while Gavin Clark of Brit folk rockers Clayhill does an equally excellent job on the hypnotic ‘Keys To The Kingdom’. One of the album’s best tracks, ‘Price You Pay’, finds Unkle in more familiar territory, starting out as a piece of low-key ambience before kicking into an uptempo groove.
Another highlight is the delicate ‘Twilight’ (featuring 3D from Massive Attack), which has the tripped out, nocturnal atmospherics of Tricky or Portishead at their best. Astbury’s contributions, on the surging ‘Burn My Shadow’ and the plaintive final track ‘When Things Explode’, also work surprisingly well, although ‘Persons & Machinery’, the dull collaboration with excellent LA art-rockers Autolux, is a big disappointment.
In fact, if there’s a central problem with War Stories, it’s that at times it strays too close to rock orthodoxy and loses the offbeat stylistic flourishes that made Unkle such an exciting proposition to begin with. Still, there are enough sufficiently inspired moments to merit your attention.