Django Django - Django Django

It takes a great deal of resolve for me to overlook a name and album combination as impossibly Googlable as Django Django's Django Django but thankfully they caught me on a good day. Or a day where I had nothing else new to listen to. Something like that. I just wish this had been released a couple of months later than this was because everything about it screams SUMMER ANTHEM - much in the same vain as Cut Copy's Zonoscope did last year.

The four gentlemen of Django Django met at an Edinburgh art school, and have been freely labelled as genres varying from art rock to electronic psychedelia, but labels are for squares, man. Maybe they're constructs devised by journalists so they have about 4 paragraphs worth of subject material for any given music article. Maybe.


AND SO the Introduction welcomes us into their world with some crickets chirping and some Crystal Castles-lite electronic experimentation, but the forefront of all this is a rather sinister mirage of synths and drums. Whistles thrown in give it a Kill Bill-opening vibe, before 'Hail Bop' continues this and adds its own chords and an insanely catchy dance tune. Thriving off of disco-funk influences, it provides a distracting background to David Maclean's dreamy vocals. The album's far-away highlight though is one of the catchiest singles I've heard in months - 'Default' jerks out a riff to rival Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Out and the background chimes and whirrs provide a fascinating backdrop.

The band can just as effectively turn their attentions to a spot of rockabilly blues on 'Firewater', and although the vocals become a little too penetrative here the instrumental bits more than make up for them. They quickly return to their eccentricities though on 'Waveforms' with its talk of "eyes in the hills below", largely a hazy-at-best contemplation of...thought... that's likely to provoke the ire of many a Guardian reader. Some tracks lack the punch or the sheer songwriting to make any other impact than "filler", such as the repetitive 'Zumm Zumm' or the rather generic 'Hand of Man' - and 'Love's Dart' could rival The Drums in its lack of charisma - but 'Wor' and its dark riffs and sirens certainly dispel any complaints of boredom. Its energy and hooks landed it a commercial spot in Coca Cola's 'Burn' energy drink, and that is obviously very exciting.

The final two tracks are quite similar in their rock motivations - 'Storm''s main selling point is its rock-n-roll influences, the psychedelia temporarily clearing and sounding more Buddy Holly than Jefferson Airplane. On the other hand there's a quirky side to 'Life's a Beach' in its chorus and the instrumentation employed - before coming to an abrupt halt.


Excellent opening. Poor middle. Decent ending. This seems to be the formula for just about every indie release nowadays and whilst there's a crushing predictability about that from a statistical point of view, the record has enough unique charm and experimentation to warrant its placing above the landfill.

Rating: 7.5/10
Highlights: Default, Wor, Waveforms, Hail Bop, Storm
Avoid: n/a

Artwork Watch: Broken vinyl records, a psychedelic semi-circle and the desert. Of course.
For fans of: Empire of the Sun, Cut Copy, Basement Jaxx