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"Fang Island"

Fang Island – Fang Island
07 July 2010, 10:00 Written by Alex Wisgard
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I know nothing about Fang Island. I don’t think I want to. This eponymous album, which I’m told is their second, tells me everything I need, and that ain’t much. The front cover is a faded photo of what appears to be a fairy battling a robot-castle, while the names of tracks are hidden – barely visible on the CD itself – with the names of the band members themselves left anonymous. There’s no cult of personality about Fang Island because there doesn’t have to be – this record is a straight-up riot.

It starts, as all great celebrations do, with fireworks. Noise filters up through the mix, pingponging across the speakers; galloping, chirruping harmonics from what sound like guitars, but could be anything. A church organ enters, and a choir strikes up the hymnal: “They are all within my reach. They are free.” And then: CRASH! BANG! FINGERTAPS AHOY! – we’re away. ‘Careful Crossers’ is a near-symphonic collision of what may be all the guitars in Brooklyn and supercharged drums – the sound of Glenn Branca, had his orchestra performed Bach chorales instead of drone concertos. The track pretty much sets the tone for the next thirty minutes – non-stop energy, meteoric drums and riffs the postman can whistle; ‘Life Coach’ stomps and stutters like a headband-clad behemoth, while ‘Sideswiper’ somehow manages to cop the acoustic uplift of Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car’ and the meaty beat from that most ROCK of tracks, ‘Black Night’ by Deep Purple.

This LP doesn’t set its stall with its lyrics, which are mostly few, far between, and difficult to discern – aside from ‘Treeton’ , which comes across like Andrew WK attempting to write an Animal Collective track, all bounce, bleep and nasal countermelody. The rest of the album, however, is drenched in enough YEAH!s and WOAH!s to make up a year’s quota for the entire music industry, otherwise letting its riffs do the talking. Even its quieter moments manage to work as epic singlaongs, especially the wordless chant of ‘Davey Crockett’, which reimagines Fleet Foxes as a band with a distinctly different sort of beard/long-hair combination and features the heaviest-sounding handclaps ever recorded.

Fang Island ebbs and flows as a continuous piece throughout its euphoric half-hour, demonstrating that for all its spontaneous sound and carefree attitude, there has been a helluva lot of thought and care taken in putting the record together. The only real disappointment is that Sleigh Bells – because one Crystal Castles album this year clearly isn’t enough! – are likely to steal all the thunder that this record deserves. This LP is a triumph, and the kind of record that bedroom rock-outs were invented for.

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