Album Review

Grammatics – Murderer

• 26th Jul 2009

There used to be a time when you couldn’t cross the road in Leeds without tripping over a pointy-toed member of Black Wire or finding yourself squashed into a beer-soaked armpit at a secret Cribs gig. Nowadays they’ve relocated, the Kaiser Chiefs have cornered the market in podgy lad-rock and the only thing left for the guitar-slingers of West Yorkshire to do is beat themselves to death with boxes of unsold ¡Forward, Russia! merchandise.

But before you start weeping into the keyboard, scratch a little deeper and you’ll find that thanks to DIY label Dance To The Radio, the pulse of the Leeds music scene is still very much a-flicker. With upcoming bands like Sky Larkin, Wonderswan and Pulled Apart By Horses on their roster, Dance To The Radio are all about sneaking underground artists into the mainstream. They managed it (some might say unfortunately) with The Pigeon Detectives, and now upcoming Grammatics single Murderer plans to follow suit.

It’s a swelling four-minute mini-epic during which the band snitch countless times on (yep, you got it) a murderer. Think a witness identification parade conducted by a choir boy and a string quartet. Owen Brinley’s androgynous vocals are key to the Grammatics set-up, giving Murderer an ethereal quality that’ll appeal to fans of Arcade Fire or Patrick Wolf, and help lift the track above and beyond the skeleton of I Predict A Riot and into the radio airwaves. Or at least a slot on NME TV, depending on how tight their jeans are.

As with most tracks from the recent Grammatics album, the band manage to fit a whole lot in without ever sounding overstuffed. Murderer is the musical equivalent of those holidaymakers who roll their clothes into little balls and fit sixteen wardrobes worth into their suitcases without ever seeming to wear more than half a bikini. On the downside it goes on a bit too long. Quite a lot too long, in fact – so long that even though “sky is screaming murder” (bit of a giveaway), I think he got away with it.

As for the B-side, well, any band would be pushing their luck with six – count ’em – versions of the same song. Especially when they’re all, erm, exactly the same, but speeded up. Or slowed down. My broken CD player can do that, thanks.