Album Review
Reptar – Body Faucet
The opening synths of Reptar’s Body Faucet build up in a way reminiscent of the sun warming up a rock, and once the temperature’s right the carnival percussion strikes up, carrying the listener into the tropical party that is the opening few tracks.
The opening track “Sebastian” has many of the key elements it takes to make a big festival hit: catchy chorus, danceable rhythms, and that sense of crescendo up to the closing chorus. “Please don’t kill me” is for me the standout track of the album, a brilliant combination of afro-beat riffs and rhythms combined with layer upon layer of sun drenched synthesiser, a brilliant collaboration of sounds and influences.
One of the stand out features of the band are Graham Uliciny’s vocals. With the kind of voice that would perhaps be more often heard singing softly to indie folk, it is refreshing to hear it fronting a big party sound such as this. The level of depth to the nature of the music it adds emphasises that it’s not all sunshine and dancing, but there is real human feeling here, especially in more refrained tracks such as “ghost bike” and “Three Shining Suns” and the closer “Water runs”.
Producer Ben Allen has already proven himself as a consistently creative producer on albums such as Animal Collective’s Meriwether Post Pavilion, and this album is no exception, production quality here is clearly imperative. Although a strong debut, Body Faucet lacks some of the song writing craftsmanship and flare for it be brilliant. The album is sometimes more a collection of songs than a well strung together Long Player and some of the ideas presented have been seen before by bands such as Animal Collective, Passion Pit and Friendly fires.
However these faults are ones that can be ironed out with age and I would jump at the chance to see Reptar live now whilst their performances are full of the zeal, enthusiasm and childlike playfulness that make this album so endearing and danceable (preferably a festival next to the sea with some sunshine!), but also I look forward to seeing how Reptar grow, polishing and refining their exciting combination of sounds and ideas.