The press release tells me that 'Raptureland' is 'full of surprises and contains multitudes' and informs me that the band's sound has drawn comparisons to 'everyone from Roxy to Suicide to Gainsbourg.' I can certainly hear a hint of Suicide in the droning, metronomic synth oscillations of 'European Girl', and Robert Christie's baritone vocals have an NY cool about them that belies his London origins. Yet there's colourful brass and whatnot thrown into the mix that completely changes the feel of the music.
We're also led to believe that the album tells 'stories of star-crossed lovers living like shivers and dying like Cherokees in post-apocalyptic Ballardian landscapes' – and while I might not go quite that far, the bleak yet shimmering title track has no shortage of atmosphere, and also provides a well-considered contrast to the more dance-orientated tracks. Not that Alphabet Saints go for bangin' floor-fillers: theirs is a more cerebral kind of elecronica that in places reminds me of She Wants Revenge.
'My Last Desire' is a slow-building, slow-burning box of tricks that begins as a queasily quiet pulsing electro-grind over which Christie wheezes and croons desolate imagery before finally, the brass bursts in and airy female backing vocals drift through, taking the song somewhere else entirely.
The spoken word narrative of 'Helpless Victim' is bleak and seedy, half Pulp's 'Sheffield Sex City', half 'Nag Nag Nag' by Cabaret Voltaire, before slipping into a chorus that's more Soft Cell than anything. If 'Raptureland' draws on myriad sources to the extent that it looks, on paper, like an exercise in referencing and recycling, then the actuality will come as a pleasant surprise. All of the elements – even the most incongruous – are applied in such a way and with such a degree of subtlety as to work remarkably well – meaning they can even get away with the awful 90s dance trappings that litter 'Fling'. And that's quite an achievement, even though it's eclipsed by the murky, desperate and tensely eerie 'The Map' that brings avant-garde experimentalism together with soundtrack compositions.
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Closer 'Carry On, Marianne' is as much Lou reed gone electro as it is Leonard Cohen, although Christie's low-key croon, contrasted against the airy vocals of Lucy Castro, definitely invite comparisons to the later works of the the Canadian wordsmith to whose famed song I suspect this is intended as a nod of sorts. I too am giving a nod, and it's one of approval.
Alphabet Saints on MySpace
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