Shriekback - Life In the Loading Bay

The sign of a great band is that it can manage to create, then expand on, it's own own inimitable world using a trademark sound which, although recognisable, never ceases to grow and develop. Now approaching their 30th anniversary, Shriekback can be counted as one of those rare bands; at ease in their own skins with nothing to prove but everything to explore and still shout about, as documented so rapturously on their towering new album, 'Life In The Loading Bay'.   Shriekback's long and convoluted journey has developed its own outstanding quirks and qualities since being formed in 1981 by Dave Allen and Barry Andrews (who'd been spending some time with Robert Fripp's League of Gentlemen after departing from XTC in 1979). Now he's back with original member, guitarist-singer Carl Marsh, and they find themselves producing the twelfth album to bear the Shriekback name [their third on Malicious Damage] and sitting most comfortably, if restlessly, at the cutting edge of song-based music in 2010, carrying a similar devilish, panoramic world-view to, perhaps, Nick Cave's Bad Seeds.   The Shriekback sound and the way it's delivered has matured and developed like a fine, potent wine, accentuating Barry and Carl's personal but sometimes surreal lyrics, which are another story in themselves; their own brand of narrative, crafted so that every syllable packs a wallop, whether humorous, poignant or biting, recalling anyone from Julian Cope to the Alabama 3.  If 2007's Glory Bumps harked back to the noisy anthems, brass and guitars of 1985's Oil & Gold, the new album's is awash with luscious, often lascivious, wry, widescreen slowies; sometimes reaching back to folk music forms or film noir soundtracks.. Despite the increased quotient of subtle textures and atmospheric embellishments, Barry still knows how to deliver a knockout hook, as on the glorious 'Loving Up The Thing', which could wreak similar havoc on more discerning modern dance floors as their 'My Spine is The Bassline' did in the early 80s.  'Nowhere, Nothing, Never', Carl's 'Flowers Of Angst' and ribald sea-shanty style 'Now I Wanna Go Home' continue in the upbeat fashion but, if anything, it's on those slower outings where the surprises and most gripping moments occur; the lustrous widescreen backdrop of 'Another Day Above The Ground', dreamy soft-focus orchestrations of 'In The Dreamlife Of Dogs', bells-twinkling lullaby of 'Simpler Machines' and harmonium beauty of 'Pointless Rivers' [further bolstered by Kat Evans' violin) and the chunky swamp-like 'Semi-delicious' which maybe boasts the album's best lyric in lines like, ''you just can't look away when the dirty doggers do it in the car park lights'. As on every Shriekback album since 1986, Wendy Partridge provides extra-dimensional harmony vocals.Shriekback retain a controlled power which is doubly effective when they let fly, as on the swaggering 'Running With The Mothmen', which rides a drunken groove, splattered with co-producer Stuart Rowe's slashing guitar shards and Barry's decidedly misbehaving keyboards. 'Flowers Of Angst' throws big guitar shapes and industrial clanks against its slinky groove. Then there are the typically Shriekbackian hybrid mashups, which can present tracks such as 'Make it Mauve' as a kind of Caribbean gospel shuffle with mass chorus [yet somehow manage to sound quite demented].Life in this particular loading bay sounds like a riot of incoming originality, incisive observations and mass musical mischief, sounding like Shriekback have another new trajectory to explore; more like living on a launch-pad.

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