This is the debut album by the Wakefield and Leeds based musician known only as Napoleon IIIrd. He blends together socially literate lyrics, a reel-to-reel tape player, tape warping experiments, some strong pop melody and a lo-fi production aesthetic which includes warm analog and electronically produced sounds. This exciting album is put out by British indie label Brainlove Records. So far he ticks all my major boxes, and gets a bonus for being from Britain. The album, however, is not an un-qualified success.

There are a couple of tracks that try and fail to capture what the best tracks on the album have. “Defibrillator”, for instance, suffers from too many layers of music that don’t impress. Perhaps if the accordian in the background, the strummed acoustic guitar and a lighter drum sound were left on their own it would work better. Instead the over-driven drum and bass, and the laptop styled rough cut ‘n’ paste production rob the song of its power. Poor lyrics let down “My Superiority Complex” and notably “What We Have Here Is Ending”, lines like “We’ve got bored/Of the Democrat’s fixing/And handed control to celebrities”, are a bit rote and lacking in insight when compared to some of the others on the album. The fact “What We Have” is bloated in length and too full of ideas (no matter how interesting some of them are), doesn’t help matters.

But… the first half of the album Napoleon regularly comes up with excellent lines. Take “Don’t live your life through the TV” from “This Is My Call To Arms”, “Listen to what I say/Average is not the best you can do” from “The Conformist Takes It All”, “This is not my life/It’s just my day job/The way I pay the rent” from “Hit Schmooze For Me” or “In life I’m excited by the things I don’t understand… I dream about simple things that could change my life” from “Anti-Patria”. There is something powerful in the way he delivers such simple lines that are about subverting and countering modern culture and society.

The second half of the album makes up for it’s relative lyrical and melodic tameness with really interesting, and even beautiful sounding, ambience between and during songs. “The Casual Terrorist Vs. The International Board Of Wishing” and “My Superiority Complex” are the best examples of this, but really all the second half has this excellent weaving of sound.

I guarantee lyrics getting stuck in your head, “Don’t live your life through the TV” will become a mantra, you will repeat Napoleon IIIrd’s words many times and find new inspiration and positivity each time you do so. The flaws of this album are countered by the things Napoleon has gotten perfect, it is a fun and passionate album created with pure intentions and worthy of your time.
80%

Links
Napoleon IIIrd [official site] [myspace]