Napoleon IIIrd - Out Of the Woods And Trees Album Review

Various
Out Of the Woods And Trees
Album Review
(Dance To the Radio)

Compilation Number Four for Dance To The Radio, casting its net ever wider and higher, without forgetting the talent that lies under its nose. There’s some fairly turgid indie MOR numbers that break up the flow of the album but they make the stars shine brighter. Napoleon IIIrd’s remix of Sky Larkin’s ‘Keepsakes’ is glowing with passion, Held By Hands’ ‘Trading On Past Treasures’ sounds, in a good way, as though it was recorded in a prison cell. Mother Vulpine are like a blast of heat in an out-of-use furnace: huge riffs, vocals that drip with charisma. And just in case you thought that all the talent in the world was birthed in Leeds’ city walls, Howling Bells do a neat, laconic, icy number on ‘This City’s Burning’.

The needle twangs wildly between ‘Humour’ and ‘Frustration’ when you realise that the member of the DTTR extended family that seems to have to shout loudest to be heard is, infact, its greatest hidden treasure. Shut Your Eyes and You’ll Burst Into Flames offer up ‘Futures Rewired’, a glimmering, desperate paean to the art of disappointment. We built the sun. It let us down… they whisper, stifling a scream. Guitar lines echo and reverberate until they threaten to outdo Groundhog Day for unhinged repetition. Bass-lines are stolen from the soundtrack to Shaft and dragged onto the dance floor. Nineteen other bands are eclipsed, and rattled on their thrones.

Hayley Avron