I’m not an architect, but I’d guess that to become a successful one you spend a long while on the basic techniques, start trying things that haven’t been done before, move on when they don’t work and after some time of this end up confident, capable and with a unique, distinctive style. It’s a necessary process if you want an original voice but you probably wouldn’t want to live in any of the early experiments. This EP, hot on the heels of their excellent ‘The Superhero EP’, is a musical equivalent of this phenomenon: three quick-fire songs, this time all done in under nine minutes, which see the band expanding their stylistic palette with confidence and aplomb but not always with unqualified success.
‘Christopher’ begins the EP with a lively African groove, a sparsely arranged bed for the band’s excellent harmony vocals to draw a portrait of a wannabe hipster which is unusually cynical for the band. There’s a rather unexpected and incongruous synth solo in a different key from the rest of the track and a kick-ass run in to the very brief chorus but otherwise it just feels a bit insubstantial. ‘Elton John’ – track two, not a special guest – bursts straight in with an enormous distorted squelchy synth riff which is winningly distinctive but ultimately grates with repetition, and the rest of the band take inspiration from Barry Manilow’s ‘Copacabana’ and explore their own lounge disco reverie. The vocals are, as ever, solid and lush and save the song from being, well, borderline unlistenable.
But EP closer ‘Plastic’ is back in safer Alphabet Backwards territory: they let the acoustic guitar back in to drive a high-speed summer ballad. After the previous two tracks it’s refreshing and energising: it’s vivacious, impatient, wide-eyed, boundlessly energetic, very pretty and very confident, with the excitement of someone who’s just mastered a new skill and can’t wait to show it off. The structure, story, performance and production are perfect and it’s the standout track by some margin, but that’s not to dismiss the other two tracks – this wouldn’t be nearly as interesting a record without them. ‘Elton John’ feels like the band’s equivalent of Stornoway’s ‘The Good Fish Guide’, distinctive enough to become a live favourite (if it isn’t already) but irritating enough that it should possibly be quietly forgotten when the band are doing bigger things – which they’ll be doing before too long at this rate. A few quick-fire EPs like this and the band should quickly have the chops, the nous and the experience to put together a cracking album. This EP is a ‘forgotten gem’ in the making; buy it, keep it, file it and then dig it out when the band are touring the world. It’s a bold experiment that doesn’t always work, but then the most exciting things are based on experiments that don’t work, and Alphabet Backwards are still a pretty damn exciting thing.