Maybe it’s just that it’s January, but Smackvan’s album – their third, apparently – seems to fit the dark winter mood. It’s the time of the season, I suppose. Though Sound in Space wouldn’t soundtrack a cheery cider advert, more likely one for mogadon. Dark and cheerlessly claustrophobic, there are times when this album sounds like it was recorded in a cupboard. The mood and lyrics make Joy Division’s ‘Atmosphere’ sound like, er, Russ Abbot’s remixed and rewritten version.
Not that that they’re like Curtis and pals in any real sense – ok, apart from, perhaps, the bleak helplessness of ‘I Remember Nothing’, the glacial movement of that track matching Smackvan’s urgency. But it’s distinctly Scottish too, folk-isand almost Fencey. However, take King Creosote… for every ‘Throw Me The Rope’ there’s a ‘Jumping at the Cats’. Smackvan offer nothing but despair and darkness, and for that reason can’t see 679 signing them any time soon 😉
However, I’ve dwelled too much on the work of other acts, and of Smackvan’s depths. Musically, this is a brilliant album. Lyrically, it’s sharp in that the bleak outlook catches the mood of the music perfectly. “Something happened here once” intones the singer as if channeled via a medium and the drums crack like the snap of bleached bones. Smackvan have despite their misgivings, created the last great album of 2008. If its aim is to put a major dampener on procedings then they succeed, admirably. “I want to climb and taste the fruit… I can’t climb… “ goes the refrain on ‘My Happiness’. In the words of Keith Harris to Orville the Duck, “you can” and you just have. Cheer up mate and dry your eyes, Sound in Space is a major achievement.