I love the fact that opening the song from this second album by London’s The Phone Call, “Hawk Lore” seems to come on like one of those long, agonizing Stewart Lee routines, the ones where the overextended repetition is first funny, then annoying, then baffling, then funny again. And, just as you are about to skip the track (or punch the stereo), an actual song hoves into view, all the more rewarding for having weathered those opening sonic storms. A great start…no, I mean that.
And whilst that opener isn’t massively representative of the sounds and styles to follow… how could any track be representative of an album this brilliantly bonkers, this adventurous, this avant-pop… it does speak volumes about their eclectic and alternative approach to making pop music.
“SDBH” feels like Talking Heads having a particularly strange day, “It Takes A Village” perhaps The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band playing with oriental sonics, and “Goat Rope Man” is reminiscent of early experiments with alternative synth pop.
The Phone Call builds its own world through music, just as bands like The Kinks and XTC did with theirs. And like those strange, quintessentially English settlements and societies, this, too, is a place with its own rules, even if we don’t really know what they are. Genres have been banished, adventure is everything, and if you can suspend disbelief for the duration of the album, that world really does take on shape and substance. You will see places and people going about their lives; you will be drawn in and feel like an observer in a parallel world as these stories, scenes, and scenarios play out.
It’s madness…But I flippin’ love it.
