It is a contradiction in terms that the band described by some as "the new Radiohead" are prone to statements such as, "Part of the reason [the album] is accessible is because we don't try to go out of the box or be innovative. We just try to play music we like to hear." Where's my "And if anyone else likes it, that's a bonus" klaxon? In Alt-J's case, those are some pre-banking crisis-sized bonuses: Their album has gone Top 20 in the UK, and single "Tessellate" has been all over radio on both sides of the Atlantic for months. They're the favorites to win the £10,000 accolade of November's Mercury Music Prize. As Radiohead would tell you, popularity doesn't preclude you from being experimental, but that Alt-J are being hailed as horndogs for innovation speaks volumes about the neutered, post-Maccabees peerage they've entered into.
The main claim for innovation on Alt-J's debut, An Awesome Wave, is that there's a lot going on. The notion of a male vocal that's halfway between Macy Gray and a goose gibbering over beats discarded from *Eskimo Snow-*era WHY? is certainly a complex notion. Sometimes they sound like Bombay Bicycle Club playing in a submarine. Comprehensible intonation is out of the window, which is probably a good job seeing as very few of the lyrics make any kind of sense. "In your snatch fits pleasure, broom-shaped pleasure," for one. The Cambridge-based, Leeds-formed band thinks nothing of layering on ever more crunchy drumbeats, metallic thuds on the piano, and constellations of sparkle as another knotty rhythm stutters forth: Woody cracks fracture the end of "Tessellate", a cloud of synths smother the final moments of "Breezeblocks", and some incongruous surf guitar twangs over the last seconds of "Taro". But these additions rarely forge any sense of dynamic or structural progression; strip all extraneous sparkle and amplification away, and the songs are exposed for the draining, elongated MOR tunes they really are. This was neatly proven earlier this week when Mumford & Sons covered "Tessellate" in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, the single sounding indistinguishable from their own material.
The most frustrating thing about An Awesome Wave is its tentativeness. Alt-J have also been compared to Wild Beasts, and while there's a superficial similarity between both bands' oddly voiced singers, when Wild Beasts hold back-- as they did on the majestic Smother-- it's because they know that priapism would be inappropriate at that particular moment. In Alt-J's case, there was never any vim to quash in the first place. The second of the record's three interludes is a finger-picked acoustic guitar melody, played over field recordings of... a car park? The bleep of a lorry reversing prompts a woman to comment, "It's good today. It's nice, isn't it?" That rhetorical pleasantry precedes "Something Good" and just as listeners might be about to staple their collars shut for good, the song comes in with a speedy Arab Strap-morose guitar part, and singer Joe Newman uses the language of the bullring ("matador," "estocada") to describe how he's going to vanquish some unwanted lingering feelings. A flurry of piano rises like a tornado in slow motion, promising a break into some much longed-for catharsis, release-- before paling back to reedy acoustic strumming. They dangle the carrot, only for you to reach out and grab it, triggering a booby-trapped cage to fall and make stasis your sentence.
The members of Alt-J have been working on An Awesome Wave for five years, and it shows. It's both overstuffed and messy, and so overworked that what life there may once have been now exists as a kind of primordial paste. When they rise above that, as with the frequent a cappella male vocal harmonies, the effect is startling-- but comically so, given how incongruous these parts are to the rest of the record. "If you give [listeners] a list of influences that come from everywhere and every genre, then there's something for everyone and people seem more intrigued by you as a band," drummer Thom Green told a student newspaper. By that logic, why not throw in some crooning for the olds, a little innuendo for the Rihanna crowd, a cliff face worth of drops just to round out that universal appeal? Cynical, maybe, as Alt-J have proved perfectly popular on their own terms. But if this is what's getting tagged as an "innovative" success these days, then heaven help the weirdos.
