WOODENTOPS - Granular Tales

After Bats and The House Of Love, now it's the Woodentops' turn to bring back the atmosphere of that '86, when they were supporting players of English jangle, with their great "Giant", a truly one-of-a-kind, adrenaline-fuelled pre-twee blend unlike anything else around at the time. "Granular Tales" is thus their comeback, twenty-eight years after "Giant" and twenty-six after their last release.

The main motivation seems to be the reconstruction of that era's spirit, starting with the live, direct-to-tape recording (done over the course of a single night, snowed in at the studio by a blizzard), so much so that Rolo McGinty, the band's frontman, has gone as far as describing "Granular Tales" as a kind of prequel to "Giant".

Maybe that's not quite true, as all those years can be felt: it's hard to imagine that, before 1986, the Woodentops could have put together an r'n'b-rock track like "Smokin'", or a ballad like "Take Me Through The Night", a chart-ready Cave number. The same goes for the lead single "Third Floor Rooftop High", which sounds like it could have come straight off the latest The War On Drugs record.

Yet there are also the Go-Betweens of "Before Hollywood" in "Stay Out Of The Light", or the vaguely jazzy class of "What Was Taken I Don't Want Back"; and, why not, a track like "A Little More Time", which could have come from the latest solo release by Dean Wareham, with its poetically dazed gait.

What "Granular Tales" ultimately lacks is a touch of freshness, which is perhaps the most evident flaw in a comeback after such a long time. But the record's melancholic or easygoing tone (the Balkan jangle of "A Pact") keeps this criticism from going any further.

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15/04/2014