On their Mercury Prize-nominated self-titled 2012 LP, Django Django revived a very specific "sound of the future", defined around 2000 by a cluster of "forward-thinking" UK rock bands like Super Furry Animals, Clinic, Simian, Badly Drawn Boy, and the Beta Band, and ushered it into the present day. Django Django's hodgepodge approach and affectless harmonizing made the Beta Band reference, in particular, hard to avoid (it probably didn't hurt that drummer/producer David Maclean’s brother used to be in Beta Band). But as a jumping-off point, these influences are limited, and the possibilities of the sound taper off the second you start to repeat yourself or lose your sense of irreverence. On Born Under Saturn, Django Django fall into both traps.
Even so, their range of raw skill is impressive. The songs present themselves as physical challenges: Can Django Django give Stereolab’s "Metronomic Underground" a jamband reworking? "Giant" says "yes." Can they repurpose surf-guitar riffs without actually making surf-rock? "Shake and Tremble" pulls off that trick. Can the juddering bassline of Big Boi’s "Shutterbugg" coexist with monklike harmonies? "First Light" answers in affirmative. But can Django Django juxtapose starched-stiff British accents against vibrant Caribbean rhythms? There’s a thirteen-minute stretch stuck right in the middle of Born Under Saturn, from "Reflections" to "Shot Down", that emphatically states "no."
More so than their woolier debut, Born Under Saturn is a demonstration of what Django Django can do rather than what they have to say or how they feel. The almost-constant harmonizing of Vincent Neff’s staid vocals surround these songs in a case of stained glass, lovely but nearly impenetrable. Hammer away enough at the album and some kind of center emerges: "High Moon" might be about restorative nocturnal powers, "Shot Down" might be a crime narrative, and maybe the album title is meant to suggest a motif of planetary influence and rebirth that gets vaguely touched upon throughout.
But Neff lends not a speck of vibrato, grit or inflection to anything, and thus, not a speck of urgency or instability or any emotional resonance. The busy arrangements and serious frontloading make Born Under Saturn’s 54 minutes a demanding investment, and the effort it takes to simply get any sort of visceral pleasure out of it makes it feel twice as long.
And so the best record Django Django may end up putting their name on is 2014’s Late Night Tales compilation. It tells you everything about the band that Born Under Saturn does: they see themselves in the lineage of late-'60s, early-'70s pop weirdos, but they listen like modernist samplers and crate diggers—witness the inclusion of Bob James’ endlessly resourced "Nautilus". A telling and exciting three-song stretch includes Massive Attack’s supervillainous cover of John Holt’s rocksteady classic "Man Next Door", TNGHT’s "Bugg’n" and Stankonia deep cut "Slum Beautiful". All of those acts have likewise been lauded for their omnivorous artistry and loved because their songs have distinct character and hooks. Django Django are clearly inspired by them, but when I think about how they fit amongst their most frequent comparisons in the UK Class of 2000, I remember SPIN's infamous pick for album of the year: something that also packed an incredible amount of musical information in a small space but was only as lovable as its input. It was "your hard drive", and unfortunately, that might be the best likeness for Django Django.
