Lamb - The Five Lives of the Lamb

How many times have you found yourself hesitating, unsure whether to buy the new post–reunion album from one of your old favourite bands? All the more so today, in this era of endless revivals, where the resurrected take the shape of zombies roaming record shops with their sights set straight on your wallet. When it comes to Lamb, however, anything goes except writing them off as sellouts, since Andy Barlow and Lou Rhodes have made the word "contrary" their calling card. Contrary was the very origin of their music, since the wildly disparate influences blended into their songs were never meant to end up together in the same pot — and yet the gamble worked, often spectacularly so. Contrary have always been the personal relations within the duo, a constant love/hate bond that keeps them tied to each other despite everything. And (bloody-minded) contrary is Lamb's situation in 2011 when, after splitting up in 2004, they independently released their fifth studio album — 5 — while doing everything they could to let it pass unnoticed by most. The least we can do, then, is give the record a listen and, while we're at it, take a peek back into the past of this perpetually restless and unstable creature.

Geographic/temporal coordinates

In 1995 the ever-imaginative British press was already talking about post-trip-hop. A perhaps hasty label, if we consider that the seeds of trip-hop had spread like wildfire just a couple of years earlier thanks to the usual suspects like Tricky, Portishead and Massive Attack, and was still in full ferment, far from reaching its peak (just think that Massive Attack themselves would release the epoch-making "Mezzanine" only three years later). To avoid any misunderstanding, let's make clear right away that the prefix post doesn't mark the end of the trip-hop phenomenon itself, but rather frames all those British musicians who were kneading their own sound with the lesson just handed down by Bristol, thereby separating two scenes that nonetheless remain strongly linked and continue to travel hand in hand. This post scene is as shifting and colourful as a giant kaleidoscope ring; there's, to name a few, the soul with hip-hop and dub veins of London's Morcheeba, the updated disco of Moloko, the witty plastic pop of Dubstar and the distorted, angular one of Sneaker Pimps, the spaced-out electronics of Laika, the ethereal a cappella dub of Olive, and the electro-bossa nova of Smoke City (not to mention that even pop stars like Madonna and Kylie Minogue couldn't resist dabbling in this territory during those years). And of course Lamb are in the mix too, only to place them more correctly within the post-trip-hop melting pot one would need to bring in at least two other key '90s strands: drum'n'bass (Goldie, Roni Size and Prodigy, to be clear) and techno (Chemical Brothers, Bentley Rhythm Ace and certain Future Sound Of London moments, just to name a few). The reason? Their anguished, overbearing sound draws on everything mentioned above, while also adding other peculiar touches, resulting in music with a strong technical and emotional imprint. Few, in fact, were able in those years to cross-breed electronics with the kind of emphasis that defines Lamb, a band whose raw, skin-deep atmospheres, propped up by furious rhythms, marry masterfully with delicate folk-derived melodies. Theirs seems like a tightrope-walking balancing act, surviving almost by miracle, a strange marriage of two souls musically light years apart, yet complementary.

While other famous duos like Eurythmics, Goldfrapp, Royksopp and Air start from a shared musical background and coexist, for the most part, in a sort of creative nirvana, in Lamb's case the origin of their music is rather a big bang, a chance collision from which the violent explosion that gives birth to their project springs. Not without consequences, of course: their rows have become legendary; rumour has it that once, because of their disagreements, Andy and Lou ended an interview by throwing objects at each other in front of a group of thoroughly embarrassed journalists.

Emotional coordinates

Lamb's music is, according to the orthodox definition, "an unprecedented mix of electronics with the song form". But in reality this curious sonic incest has the ability to evoke far deeper feelings, playing out in its visceral love/hate relationship the symptoms of the irrational duplicity of the human soul. Their music is intense, emotional and cerebral, it commands both heart and mind at once and doesn't easily settle for staying in the background. It takes, in short, a certain state of mind to follow it through its swinging sonic twists and turns, which seem to follow one another with no apparent break in continuity. But when the balance works, the whole thing manages to set itself apart from everything else heard up to that point, transcending genre definitions to strike directly at the emotional chords.

Andy and Lou are both undeniably talented songwriters/multi-instrumentalists whose diametrically opposed artistic sensibilities magically end up integrating with one another, a sort of Yin and Yang of the song form. For better or worse, Lamb represent the male universe — more pragmatic — and the female one — more emotional — on a full collision course. Two complementary souls engaged in a figurative dance more akin to a sensual tango than to the wild head- and body-shaking that accompanies their intensely charged concerts.

The Encounter

Andy and Lou meet in Manchester in 1994, put in touch by a mutual friend. Andy is an electronics and digital-gadgetry enthusiast, earning his living working in a recording studio, but is looking for a partner to launch a project that pushes beyond that environment. Lou, on the other hand, is an intimate folksinger who loves acoustic sounds, writes poetry in her spare time, and by her own admission is a "technophobe": she even has trouble turning on the microwave. Like Andy, though, she's looking for someone with whom to broaden her horizons.

Their debut album — Lamb (1996) — is born this way, an impromptu effort by two people embarking, still light-heartedly, on a path of free-flowing experimentation. Obviously, given the huge differences in background between the two, the first results sound bizarre and at times unsettling, but the originality of these compositions is beyond doubt. Over the simple, ancestral folk melodies that Lou brings into the studio, Andy replaces the acoustic guitar with downtempo and breakbeat patterns, lashings of drum'n'bass, elements of jungle and dub, free-jazz mixtures thanks to the constant use of an acoustic double bass, techno and trance rhythms bordering on goa, and layers of powerful electronic manipulation that often stray into ambient territory. Every now and then a string section, or perhaps a few scattered piano notes, are scattered about to support the lyricism of the words and add depth to the melodic side. Presiding over it all, however, remains Lou's beautiful and rather distinctive voice, a sort of trip-hop vestal in the vein of Beth Gibbons, capable of moving or irritating in equal measure with her sudden shifts in register — from the crystalline tones of electronic ballads to the granite sacredness of the most twilit folk tradition, passing through ungainly childlike wails and jazz improvisations.

Lou, then, gives free rein to her pen to write songs that are deeply intimate and personal, as folk tradition demands, but Andy, for his part, does everything he can to complicate melodic lines he finds too simple, crediting A Guy Called Gerald's futuristic "Black Street Technology" as the inspiration for doubling up drum machines and breakbeats. Very often, in fact, a track ends up shelved for months because it seems to have no direction to follow, and it's usually Andy who rescues it, dismantling its rhythms and rebuilding them in unusual time signatures. It's a long exercise in productive intuition and genuine digital tinkering, taking shape under the bemused (not to say sceptical) eyes of poor Lou, who only steps in to plug in and unplug the gear at the end of the session.

Either way, the lamb sound had officially been born, and when the demo of "Gold" landed on Fontana's desk, they didn't hesitate for a minute before signing the duo. Commercial success would never be enormous, not with this Lamb nor with their subsequent work, but it certainly exceeded expectations, and the duo was immediately catapulted into the upper echelons of the English alternative scene. Charts aside, the secret lies in the simple fact that Lamb remains one of the most interesting debut albums released in the '90s. Save perhaps for a couple of forgivable filler tracks, Lamb is innocence made into music, a record built from a thousand influences in its DNA yet so singular it has no equal. Listening to it means venturing into a dark, bristly, sticky undergrowth, a synthetic labyrinth that leads the mind down a tortuous path of sudden turns through acute or convex angles, but certainly never right ones.

The opening trio of tracks is among the most lethal. It starts with "Lusty", with its erotic shades, sparse melodic loops and well-placed drum machine hits. It continues with "God Bless" (the very first song the duo ever wrote), which moves over a more substantial jungle bed, with Lou giving free rein to the more guttural side of her voice. Finally we reach "Cotton Wool", whose opening crackling double-bass notes are the most evocative moment the record has to offer, while Lou's unsettling melody is anchored to the ground by drum'n'bass beats and tries to break free, twisting itself into an ascending spiral, as if in an ideal, spasmodic struggle between woman and machine.

Later on the record, "Gold" uses the vibraphone to conjure up film-noir atmospheres that turn rather sci-fi in its Barlow-esque noisy interlude. Also lovely is the unusual "Zero", which relies solely on the acoustic accompaniment of a string quartet that, in the chorus, distorts the harmonies, almost as if it were a piece of contemporary classical music performed by Quintorigo.

If anything, it's the trance tones of "Trans Fatty Acid" and "Merge" (the latter entirely instrumental) that drag on a little too long, though they're still enjoyable for genre fans and especially effective in the duo's explosive live performances. "Feela", closing the record, also perhaps overstays its welcome a bit, while still being a lovely piece of soft winter chill out, driven by a sparse electric-piano chord progression and touches of post-modern cello.

Could a final sting in the tail be missing? Of course not — it's delivered by the now-famous "Gorecki". Here's how Lou recounts the genesis of the lyrics:

In memory of one of the rare and precious moments of perfection that life grants us. A moment of uncontainable happiness, an epiphany. These moments are a kind of vortex, as if the purpose of life itself were to move toward them and, at the same time, to be born from them. These moments carry a sense of the infinite and make you feel, at least for me, that if life ended at that precise instant it would be complete. This particular moment was accompanied by listening to Gorecki's Third Symphony, which then provided the musical inspiration for the song.

In an enveloping crescendo of piano chords and background strings, Lou intones her lyrics in a cathartic trance until the rhythmic explosion hits, transforming into a long, hypnotic ride through the depths of the human heart. "Gorecki" would become the lucky lead single for the whole of Lamb, as well as one of the duo's most important hits.

Add to all this the videos accompanying Lamb's songs, perfectly in tune with the music, strange and dazed yet actually quite savvy too, well directed and meticulously crafted in their imagery. The pair, incidentally, are also helped by their good looks and distinctly photogenic qualities: Lou, in particular, bears a certain resemblance to actress Tilda Swinton — at times it almost seems strategically emphasized. Anyone who wouldn't have given a cent for the live translation of such complex music will soon have to think again, because on stage Lamb prove even more compelling than on record. Backed by an excellent band, Andy thrashes about nervously between console virtuosity, African percussion and even double bass, finding time along the way to dive into the crowd, while Lou stands on stage still and cathartic, yet manages to silence the entire audience with just her voice and two notes of cello in the background.

The three-year crisis

If Lamb, despite its complexity, had been born the legitimate offspring of pure experimental inspiration, the new Fear Of Fours (1999) was now conceived as a monumental university thesis in sound engineering. Andy focuses even more on technical virtuosity, continuing his mission to upend any sonic bed deemed too regular, as if marking his territory with new, unheard-of inventions before some other digital fanatic could get there first. Lou, for her part, clings tooth and nail to whatever scrap of melody still stands, and howls like never before so as not to be swept away by the electronic storm.

Needless to say, this is the period in which Lamb came within an inch of splitting up, such was the tension in the studio between the two of them. In truth, the balance of power still works, and Fear Of Fours even ends up sounding vaguely more compact and cohesive than Lamb, but by the end of the listen you're still left exhausted and out of breath. The title itself had already warned us: Andy's fear (or disdain) for 4/4 time, for regularity and perfect geometries. On the back of the sleeve, track number 4 doesn't appear, while on the record the fourth song is in fact made up of the final 7 seconds of the previous one. Another oddity: an alternate version of "Lullaby", which can only be found on CD in the pregap before the first track.

It must be said, though, that the opening track couldn't have been better chosen: the instrumental ambient of "Soft Mistake" unfolds slowly, buoyed by boreal keyboards, and builds to a tribal rhythmic crescendo, acting as the perfect sonic aperitif to cleanse the ear before the massive feast to come. It's the following "Little Things", in fact, that reveals the true troubled soul of Fear Of Fours, a song halfway between an anemic nursery rhyme sung by Little Red Riding Lou and the digital wreckage of the Big Bad Wolf Andy. "B Line" (accompanied by an excellent video) does likewise, alternating between a semi-innocent verse and a deaf, feverish chorus. "Alien" once again wanders through the dark, anguished undergrowth of Lamb, populated by strange, lopsided creatures, while the hypnotic "Here" employs a Brazilian percussion section to build a bouncing samba groove. By contrast, "Softly" moves over genuinely warm, acoustic jazzy ground, rich with Lou's fallen-angel vocals, which will no doubt divide opinion.

There's no shortage of excellent moments, though. "Ear Parcel" is quite possibly the best instrumental track Lamb ever recorded, a true thoroughbred in the Björk-esque mould that starts out on tiptoe, as if Tchaikovsky's Sugar Plum Fairy were dancing in a pond full of frogs, only to end up in a frenzied dance where progressive-house and free-jazz mix together with apparent ease. Lamb's most poignant side is laid bare by "Bonfire" (the best track here), a hypnotic chamber trip-hop number with a gorgeous melodic line that warms the heart. Also lovely is the heart-wrenching closing track "Lullaby", a short lullaby steeped in symphonic strings.

If anything, it's the tracks that head down the pop route that do less credit to Fear Of Fours, because, however valid and heartfully sung, they seem to clash with the record's overall architecture, and incidentally are also the ones that have aged the worst. "Fly" and "All In Your Hands" (the latter featuring an irritating, snotty little-girl vocal) suffer too much from certain sounds now irreversibly buried along with the end of the '90s. Near the end, the other instrumental, "Five", once again softens the tone with a substantial dub/chill-out feel fit for the morning after a bender.

Either way, it's impossible to dismiss Fear Of Fours, an album that, for all its heaviness and unevenness, confirms the artistic consistency shown by Lamb, who continue on their path without selling out a single minute of their record to squeeze in a more radio-friendly single in an attempt to repeat the success (itself unplanned) of "Gorecki" three years earlier.

The marriage

So imagine the surprise when, after the clashes of Fear Of Fours that had almost torn them apart, Lamb returned two years later with What Sound (2001), a record in sharp contrast to the previous two, one you could pair with adjectives like "balanced" and "serene" - a record far removed from the sound that had made Lamb's name in the first place. Perhaps that's also why much of the public and the critics proved rather lukewarm towards What Sound, with the inevitable accusations of a sell-out into pop, or "easy listening" if you prefer. And yet Andy and Lou now seem to communicate with far more serenity, and the result is a record that draws you in to listen rather than forcing itself on you. In short, Lamb pull off the small miracle of reinventing themselves without losing an ounce of their charm.

There are some well-connected friends lending a hand in the studio (Jimi Goodwin, on loan from Doves, and Arto Lindsay on guitars, MeShell NdegeOcello on bass, and Michael Franti's voice on backing vocals), leaving Andy free to focus more on the quality of the sounds than on sheer quantity. Lou, for her part, matures her vocal style and no longer needs to overdo the howls of the past, because, as she puts it, she finds in What Sound a record "of the heart" that suits her folk roots far better than the previous two "of the head", which were driven more by Andy's technical virtuosity. The result? Eleven new tracks that deliver small, unexpected gems of singular songwriting, more accessible to the ear yet never blatantly commercial, inlaid among other things with meticulous, chamber-sized folktronic work dense with barely perceptible crackles and intangible atmospheres.

The most admirable example of the new sound is perhaps the title track itself, "What Sound", which opens like a glimpse of arctic landscape seen in the light of dawn, flown over by a symphonic carpet and marked by the steady pulse of a drum machine. The following "One" unfurls hypnotically like the coils of a snake, with rhythmic cadences fit for a catharsis of the mind and Lou's onomatopoeic vocalising tinged with Middle Eastern flavours. Also very dreamlike is "Heaven", a slow ancestral-folk lullaby that, taken on its own, would hardly scorn the accompaniment of mandolin and viola da gamba, but under Andy's hand is dressed in shimmering electric crackles and a guitar that sounds as if filtered through a vocoder. More minimalist, on the other hand, are "Small", with its abstract keyboard work in the style of Moby, and the ethereal, bucolic closer "Just Is".

Andy has his moment on "Scratch Bass", once again playing with techno and drum'n'bass, while Lou claims the melodic little march driven by the funky bass of "Sweet", the first pop crossover of their career that truly works. The lyrical peak, however, comes with the splendid "I Cry", which in its atmospheres pays tribute to "Kid A", while in the vocal delivery it draws directly on the late, heartbreaking Billie Holiday. And for anyone still not satisfied, there's always the hugely famous "Gabriel", which with disarming simplicity delivers the warmest melody, atmosphere and lyrics on the whole record. Closing the circle is the short hidden track "Blessing In Disguise", with gentle acoustic piano arpeggios.

Less striking but perhaps more accomplished than other records, What Sound, in its own modest way, adds to the scene of the most melodic electronica of the early 2000s.

Lamb, in short, consolidate their reputation as a free and coherent band, carving out for their music a few small slices of mainstream recognition too, including ad campaigns and films (among which, in Italy, we unfortunately recall "Tre Metri Sopra Il Cielo"). Listened to again today, tracks like "Gabriel", "Sweet" or "Small" prove to have aged extremely well.

The divorce

If anything, it's the following Between Darkness And Wonder (2003) that fails to leave much of a mark. An album that continues along the lines of the previous What Sound, with the difference that, while the first had combined electronic refinement with an ear always tuned to melody, the new record now focuses more on the former, shortchanging the latter. Unable to afford the cost of a studio for the whole time the sessions required (which, given Andy's attention to detail, are never exactly brief), Lamb rented an old farmhouse tucked away in the lush countryside around Bath, big enough to house the various musicians and sound engineers at regular intervals over the necessary months. The place's very particular acoustics did not escape Andy's keen ear, and after countless tests he decided the various instruments sounded better in different spots around the house. So the guitars ended up in the hallway, piano and keyboards in the dining room, and the largest room with stone walls (dubbed the live room) was soundproofed and used to record drums and strings. Now regular fixtures alongside Lamb include, among others, jazz double-bassist Jon Thorne, drummer Nikolaj Bjerre and Icelandic guitarist Oddur Mar Runarsson, who all contribute heavily to the project, even co-writing several tracks.

Between Darkness And Wonder comes across as an even more ambitious work, elaborate in its harmonies and with an obsessive sonic cleanliness that would do credit to the Steely Dan school, but it sadly lacks the compositional verve of the past. Granted, if it's technical quality you're after, this record has few equals. Can't decide how to spend an hour of your rainy Sunday afternoon? Between Darkness And Wonder and a decent pair of headphones will give you a thoroughly enjoyable audiophile experience.

Not all is lost, though, even on the songwriting front: when the balance holds, the songs still manage to strike an emotional chord. Worth noting, then, is the beautiful "Please", a folktronic song that's decidedly more Lou than Andy, or "Till The Clouds Clear" (the best track here), which also starts off with a simple acoustic guitar figure but comes vividly alive in the chorus, marching along over heavy layers of electric sound while Lou lets loose with a howl not heard since the days of Fear Of Fours. Lighter and very pleasant too is the percussive "Stronger", while among the most interesting episodes are undoubtedly "Darkness", with echoes of Laurie Anderson's vocal avant-garde, and "Sun", carried by a curious ska rhythm.

Although put together with great class, the rest of the record fades into the background; "Wonder", "Hearts And Flowers", "Open Up" and "Learn" all drift by without a jolt, while the obligatory instrumental "Angelica" (which uses a piano sample from Debussy's "Clair De Lune") adds nothing new compared to past episodes. Even "Sugar 5", which had the potential to become the new flagship single, presents a melody that's simply too monotonous, circling the same two notes for four minutes straight.

And so we reach the end of the line. After Between Darkness And Wonder, Andy and Lou mutually agree to put the band on hold, each following their own path - a need that had become increasingly pressing for both of them. There's just enough time to release the pricey Best Kept Secrets: The Best Of Lamb 1996-2004, which gathers an almost complete overview of their work across 16 tracks, followed also by Lamb Remixed (2005), which lines up an eclectic collective of various artists taking on some of their best-known songs. Andy would then use the Lamb name once more to put his name to Back To Mine - The Voodoo Sessions/Lamb (2005), a series of electronic music compilations that, in the style of Late Night Tales, invite one artist at a time to put together a selection of tracks to "play on the way home after a night out".

From here on, Andy Barlow would continue lending a hand in production on various projects (including Lou's solo work) under the name Hip Optimist, team up with singer Carrie Tree for the Luna Seed project, and form a band called Hoof. In 2011, under the name Lowb, he released his first true solo project, Leap And The Net Would Appear (later reissued and reworked in 2013).

Lou Rhodes, meanwhile, would return to her folk roots, recording no fewer than three solo albums, released through her independent label Infinite Bloom. In 2006 the intimate Beloved One received excellent reviews and made the shortlist for the Mercury Prize. It was followed by Bloom (2007) and One Good Thing (2010).

Five

Raise your hand now if you'd noticed! Maybe not everyone knew that Lamb had already officially reunited back in 2009, after persistent requests for a series of shows across Europe. The experiment had worked brilliantly, and in April 2011 Lou and Andy released a small record of these new live performances (Lamb – Live At Koko) on their new independent label, Strata Music.

The live album, featuring 11 tracks, is warmly recommended, even as an alternative to the more conventional “Best Of”, and it reminds us of Lamb's full live prowess, with Andy and the band on excellent form, while Lou's voice cuts through the speakers in a way it doesn't even manage on their most polished studio work (“Gabriel” and “Gorecki”, for instance, are spine-tingling).

What's more, the renewed energy of the stage gave both of them the urge to go back into the studio. Having fully worked through their solo impulses, Andy and Lou once again felt ready to sit down next to each other and bring a new batch of songs to life. As Andy explains in the mini-documentary on their homepage, they did it with great pleasure but above all for themselves, just like in the early days, with barely a thought for possible commercial or promotional developments (which were indeed minimal). Light years away from wanting to climb back onto the rock'n'roll bandwagon, Lamb rediscovered the pleasure of doing things exactly as they wanted, preserving their independence by releasing the new material through their own Strata Music.

For 5 (May 2011) the whole business of singles is dropped entirely: the band prefers instead to put a couple of songs online as a preview. Curiously, the studio sessions for conceiving the album took place at the same time as the sessions for Andy's Leap And The Net Would Appear and Lou's One Good Thing, meaning that 5 sounds, at times, like a curious hybrid of the two.

Lamb pay tribute to a few new muses: the opening of “Another Language” sounds lifted straight from Imogen Heap, while the chorus of “She Walks” carries echoes of the female indie-pop of Florence Welch (or any of the other 45 million young ladies of that ilk who've popped up since 2009), yet their sound remains unmistakable all the same. The studio production matches the very high technical standards of their last, less fortunate, Between Darkness And Wonder, but Lou's new melodies breathe a fresh air. Granted, the stormy expressive urgency of an album like Lamb or the grace of What Sound have by now faded, but in compensation the songs on 5 are all pretty solid.

It ranges from the rediscovered jazz percussiveness of “Exsistential Itch” to the melancholy piano taps of “Dischord”, taking in the more pronounced “Butterfly Effect”, all robotic synths, and “Build A Fire”, which is in fact Lamb's first surprising rock song (!), with a chorus that seems written to be sung under the stars at a summer festival. There are also nods to their more recent past, with the atmospheric “Rounds” and “Wise Enough”, and to a more distant one revisited in the percussive “Strong The Root”, flirting with drum'n'bass, and “Last Night The Sky”, carried by a sturdy rhythm section in its finale.

Damien Rice's voice, a guest on “Back To Beginning”, blends well with Lou's, almost with the same magic as on his “O” (with Lisa Hannigan), so much so that it almost sounds like an outtake from that record, were it not for the electronic fragments Andy scatters around it. It is “The Spectacle”, however, that towers over the rest of the tracklist: a soft piano ballad with a sumptuous bed of strings and a simple melody sung by Lou's voice at its most beautiful.

At the moment, 5 can be downloaded online, while the physical copy is available exclusively through the Manchester duo's official website. The tempting limited-edition copies, which offered a second disc of alternate versions plus an extended booklet and artwork, have (of course) already sold out entirely.

The Lamb cult, then, lives on, albeit more under the radar than in the past, with the vague impression that the less people talk about them, the happier it makes them. Now completely independent, free of any ties to the liturgies of the music industry, Andy and Lou spent much of 2011 touring around Europe, in a run of shows that, judging by their blogs, seemed driven more by the sheer pleasure of being on stage than by any promotional obligations tied to the release of 5. Catching them live always remains a thoroughly recommendable experience, but listening to 5 is more than enough to understand that Lamb are back in good shape, still with something to say and, above all, with the same unyielding artistic coherence that has set them apart for over a decade now.

A new era? Backspace Unwind

2014: the arrival of a second post-reunion offspring seems to officially usher in a new era in Lamb's nearly two-decade career. It seems that today Andy Barlow and Lou Rhodes have truly reached a far more harmonious stylistic and personal balance than in the past; where they once literally threw chairs at each other to decide which direction to take their albums in, today they seem able to communicate their ideas to one another with barely a glance, making the creative process far more pleasant to share (not to mention having free time to indulge themselves cooking macrobiotic delicacies between sessions).

However, the problem with Backspace Unwind lies precisely in this new calm that pervades it, an autumnal meditation perfectly in tune with the season currently underway, but one that sounds too polished to leave a lasting mark. Obviously they can't stay hotheads forever, but with the storms that made albums like Lamb and Fear Of Fours unique now gone for good, the sixth chapter does little more than look back at the previous (and already thoroughly mature) 5 without altering the formula much. As solemn and cathartic as ever, Lou delivers every word as if revealing the fourth secret of Fatima, while Andy wraps the songs in layers upon layers of electronics that are as enveloping as they are calibrated down to the smallest detail.

Of course, there's no shortage of good moments. The delicacy of “As Satellites Go By”, with piano up front and a lovely surprise ending, still has its quiet charm, as does the curious medieval chant of “Only Our Skin”, and the spectral “The Caged Bird Sings”. But the standout track is undoubtedly “Doves & Ravens”, one of the most fragile and moving melodies heard this year, one that certainly doesn't pale next to their past songbook — quite the opposite.

But for the rest, Backspace Unwind is pervaded by a sense of business-as-usual that's hard to shake off. So, even though the title track drones on in a way that recalls the style of Suzanne Vega, “Nobody Else” makes an extremely odd nod to James Brown (?), or on “In Binary” and “We Fall In Love” Andy commits the “crime” of regularizing the rhythm by drifting toward almost synth-pop shores, the impression remains that the album never truly takes flight the way a track like “What Sound” once did with unbearable lightness (“What Makes Us Human” comes closest, with its lovely sonic bed underneath, but the result doesn't fully convince). Decidedly tacky, on the other hand, is “SH9 Is Back”, a lapse in taste never before recorded in their career.

What was fair to expect in 2014 from a duo that emerged from the late-90s post-trip-hop era? Certainly not another “Gabriel”, nor an album on a par with their landmark debut, and Lamb are well aware of this too, as they continue on their path with calm and integrity. But after the still-successful 5, this Backspace Unwind sounds like little more than an appendix.

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