Album Review

St Vitus Dance – Glypotheque

• 12th Apr 2008

It’s tempting to think that St. Vitus Dance have hardly changed in the last two decades, as Glypotheque echoes with dark Northern eighties and nineties pop whose own influences were purloined from the sixties in a cycle of recycling.

Their second album comes after a twenty-year sabbatical, and by admission is “world weary” in places. That’s not to say that it’s misanthropic –there’s the joyful glumness and understatement of Lloyd Cole or Ian Broudie in Noel Burke’s vocals. The band’s adopted Merseyside base with all its heritage has definitely rubbed off on them, name checked in Wither Litherland and stomping through Not A Good Time and Spendlove. But the lyrical turn of phrase as well as Burke’s lilt and range are more than tinged with Morrissey: “You’re finally here, God help me” laments the title track, one of the better on the album. The literate mixture of dirges and ditties evokes The Magnetic Fields, and though it can’t match the poetry and dark humour, shows a similar magpie approach to genre.

There are splashes of surf rock in opener Winners All, the near psych-pop of Fevered Ego, a twang of almost Greek folk on Human Interest Story and at a pinch, the arch, accordion-led Stupor Mundi could be Stephin Merritt writing for The Pogues. From heavily distorted guitar to mandolin, the album’s use of strings is adept and eclectic, with a retro feel that suggests The Smiths produced by Joe Meek here and there.

As a whole, the songs drag a little and unlike their namesake, St. Vitus Dance are rarely going to set your feet tapping of their own accord. To quote track Seriously Listing “It’s never gonna make my top ten”.