- Music
- 18 Feb 11
The sixties come back to life.
This is an album filled with proper ’60s-style multi-note melodies (not the type of major-chord arpeggios that often pass for melodies these days, grumble, grumble etc). It’s bolstered by winningly ramshackle multi-voice counter-melodies, mass chanting, descending bass-lines, hip-swivelling rhythms (which change pace at the drop of a drumstick), screeching brass interludes, and unapologetically skeletal guitar twangs and buzzes. It’s a bit of a crescendoing riot, in which all of the rioters have an idiosyncratically winning window-breaking technique. That shouldn’t be surprising, I suppose, given that the mainstays are French indie stalwart Tahiti Boy, his backing band the Palmtree Family, and the Brazilian Os Mutantes front-man, Sergio Dias. They’re even joined on a couple of tracks by promiscuous cameo-rioters Jane Birkin and Iggy Pop. Flower power seldom sounded so good.