TLOBF Loves… Family Machine

-

Once in a while an album comes along that, right from the first bars, that makes itself so cozily at home on your shelf it feels like you’ve owned it for years. Wilco and Billy Bragg did it with Mermaid Avenue, but they had a slight advantage in the form of fame, fortune (relatively speaking) and thousands of unpublished Woody Guthrie songs to work with. If you’re the Family Machine though, a debut from four lads from Oxford who’ve been playing together barely 18 months, it’s another. It curls up on your hearth like a tabby mog and is just as reluctant to budge.

Suitably for such domestic metaphors, Family Machine are a friendly, down-to-earth outfit, joking that they met “by the bins behind Tesco on the Cowley Road” (they didn’t really). Lead singer Jamie, guitarist Neil, bassist Darren and drummer Jay insist that friends, collaborators, audience and probably even the Tesco shelf stackers are all part of the “family machine” whose warm glow gives the band its inspiration.

You are the Family Machine offers 13 tracks of fine, nuanced, eternal-sounding pop. There are whispers of Andrew Bird in the quirks of Jamie’s vocals and echoes of circa-1997 Supergrass in the alternately euphoric and mournful melodies (it’s produced by Ian Davenport, who shared production duties on In It For the Money). It’s also a textural delight, from crunchy vocals and slide guitar on the glorious opener ‘Ko Tao’ and shivery four-voice harmonies on ‘The Do Song’ to a swoon-worthy whistled melody on ‘Flowers by the Roadside’.

Later this month, in typically generous and eccentric style, Family Machine plan to sail the album down the Thames – on memory sticks trapped inside bottles, mysterious treasure for whoever fishes them out of the shallows. They’ve already achieved local notoriety by secreting CDs in trees around Oxford and floating EPs across southern England, dangling from helium balloons. Keep your ears peeled as they announce summer dates around the UK and a spot at Truck in July. Live, they’re a summery delight – they’ll sweep away April’s chill drizzle, even if only for an hour.

mp3:> Family Machine: ‘Reminds me of you’

Links
Family Machine [myspace]