I have a love-hate relationship with The Gullivers, but they may just have turned a corner with this double A-Side digital release.
The Gullivers are peddlers of sometimes-excruciatingly twee pop songs that are so brittle with saccharine that they seem terrified of leaving the safety of half-time shuffle beats, distant pianos and delay & reverb-drenched guitars, lest they get a bit too perky and do themselves an injury. And they’ve honed this dream-like shimmer pop sound to a T, creating haunting, delicately beautiful soundscapes upon which to paint their equally dream-like poetry.
And therein lies the “hate” part of things for me. Dreamlike soundscapes I can handle and even enjoy at times, but vocalist Mark Byrne has a voice that makes fighting cats, rutting donkeys and iron bathtubs being dragged uphill sound like an enticing alternative. Any subtlety and beauty the band may have conjured is immediately and unrepentantly torn apart by his off key yelping and nonsensical versifying. I’m all for the DIY ethic and encouraging folks to experiment and try things out, but sometimes someone has to be told they simply can’t sing and if necessary be given a triangle instead. Sorry to be blunt, but you only have to skip to the next track on their Myspace page (‘A Wall Against the Noise’) to be reminded where they’ve come on from in this respect.
On ‘All that Fall’ Byrne is thankfully replaced on lead vocals by keys player Sophie McGrath, and although she does her best to impersonate her colleague’s style, the mere fact that she can sing in tune and hold a note for a few seconds makes the song infinitely more palatable than past efforts. The lyrics are still vomit-inducingly twee (“I’ve been hit by conkers on my nose/More times than I’ve been hit by love” [barf] ) but the band get up a bit of a head of steam and, dare I say it, something of a groove towards the end. Heavy metal kick drum aside, the production still renders the song restrained and relaxed, but it’s about as up-tempo as the Gullivers get.
‘In Orbit’ sees Byrne’s return in a dual-vocal arrangement, but the song itself is verging on instrumental anyway so we can just about put up with his relatively sparse vocal interjections. A simple but effective brushed drum beat, augmented by just a little bit of great-sounding junkyard percussion and a simple Hammond organ chord sequence provide the underpinning for Mark’s nicely underplayed trippy guitar lead lines and the pair’s otherworldly vocal cooing. I half expected a recorder orchestra to appear halfway through, but thankfully the Gullivers leave that card in their pockets and thereby keep the song teetering on the edge without falling off into a sea of candy floss and sleepy kittens.
If they included a free kite and a sunny summer afternoon to fly it on, it would probably round out a perfect single for the library crowd. If you find Morcheeba’s “Who can you Trust” a bit too frenetic and hardcore, this’ll be just the ticket for you. It makes Sigur Ros’s dreamiest days sound like Slayer on heat.