Pushing It

Electrelane mixes minimalist rhythms, humming synths and organs with ferociously churning guitars.

by Michael Pelusi

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Published: Jun 5, 2007

'Lane Change: Even the foursome's pretentious ideas often wind up working smashingly. : Louis Decamps (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

In Electrelane's hands, simple chord progressions that hardly seem to move yield beguiling melodies.

Since 2000, the Brighton, England, quartet have been making truly compelling indie rock. They've mixed minimalist rhythms and humming synths and organs with ferociously churning guitars. They've fearlessly marched their music into abstraction � blurs of noise and stabs of dissonance.

Even the foursome's pretentious ideas � songs sung in foreign languages, songs sung by choirs, lyrics cribbed from Friedrich Nietzsche � often wind up working smashingly. And they have a sense of humor � best displayed on last year's Singles, B-Sides & Live compilation, with a version of their intense instrumental "Long Dark" that makes room for the keyboard riff from Salt-N-Pepa's "Push It."

With their latest album, No Shouts, No Calls (Too Pure), Electrelane has made yet another leap into new territory: love songs.

The first words on the album from singer/keyboardist/guitarist Verity Susman are: "You say you don't know what love means anymore/ Since I found you, I'm tearing down the walls without you." It's a shocking turn, not least because Susman's game if oft-pitch-challenged voice seems ill-suited to confessional and conventional song structures. But thanks to the inspired chemistry of the group � Susman, guitarist Mia Clarke, bassist Ros Murray and drummer Emma Gaze � they ultimately master such stylistic changes. No Shouts, No Calls is free of artily obscure tactics � no choirs, foreign languages or literary references � and it's their warmest work yet.

"I think that Verity felt like she wanted to be more personal with her lyric writing on this album," Clarke says over e-mail. "We always want to try and do something different with each of our albums, and not repeat the same formula, which would get boring very quickly. After making [2005's] Axes, which consisted of longer, predominantly instrumental tracks, it felt quite natural to write a different set of songs."

But along with lyrical, optimistic songs like the first single, "To the East," and the ukulele-driven "Cut and Run," No Shouts, No Calls contains plenty of what the band arguably does best: enthralling wordless jams like "Tram 21" and "Between the Wolf and the Dog" that showcase Susman's diverse keyboard colorings and Clarke's driving riffs.

"I started playing guitar just after I turned 16 � the day after I saw Fugazi for the first time," says Clarke. "That show was an absolutely life-changing moment for me, and I bought a guitar the next day. However, I think that my 'style' � if you can even call it that! � came about simply from being in Electrelane. I learnt to play through improvising with three other people, and I particularly feel that any rhythmic and dynamic intuition I have comes from playing with Emma's drums."

You can hear that intuition all over No Shouts, No Calls in the way the band effortlessly locks into the ebb and flow of songs like "In Berlin" and "Five." They know just when to make a song whisper, and when to suddenly let it roar.

After recording two albums, Axes and 2004's The Power Out, in Chicago with Steve Albini engineering, the band took a new path on No Shouts, No Calls. The album's songs were written in Berlin (Clarke says the city "had the strongest impact on the music") and recorded in Michigan. "We didn't really bring any Albini techniques with us into the studio," she says. "Bill Skibbe and Jessica Ruffins, who own the Key Club recording studio [where No Shouts was recorded], are amazing engineers and they had more than enough ideas and techniques of their own." Ultimately, despite the departures, the album is of a piece with the prior ones � a credit to the clarity of the band's vision and execution.

High-profile gigs like recent stints opening for The Arcade Fire indicate that Electrelane may soon reap a larger audience. And Clarke � a freelance music scribe who's written for Pitchfork, The Guardian, The Wire and others � has had to dial down that sideline activity. "I used to write reviews on the road all the time, but now I prefer to just commit myself to it when I'm at home for a while � which hasn't been that much recently."

(m_pelusi@citypaper.net)

Electrelane play Sat., June 9, 9:30 p.m., $10, with Tender Forever and Relay, Johnny Brenda's, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684, www.johnnybrendas.com.

 

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