Album
Menace Beach
Black Rainbow Sound
August 31 2018 (Memphis Industries)
9/10
Words: Kieran O'Brien
The city of Leeds has been home to some of the most successful shifts in musical style of recent years. Hookworms adeptly ditched distortion for synthesisers on the aptly titled ‘Microshift’, whereas Eagulls traded brash punk choruses for reflective dream pop on ‘Ullages’. On their third album ‘Black Rainbow Sound’, Leeds two-piece Menace Beach repeat the same trick and then some, swapping out guitar-based surf rock for spellbinding electronica infused with fuzzy guitars. The result is a record which is packed to the brim with ideas and sounds more exciting with every listen.
On opener ‘Black Rainbow Sound’, a jagged post-punk riff from guitarist Ryan Needham makes way for Liza Violet’s hypnotic drum loops and unhinged synth hooks, immediately displaying the ability the duo has to fuse ideas and styles without compromising their expansive sound. Complete with spoken guest vocals from Brix Smith Start (ex-The Fall), the title track is a stunning opener that showcases the band at their visceral best.
The best records create an aesthetic that can feel like an escape from real life, and by the time the angular synth riffs and extra-terrestrial lyrics of second track ‘Satellite’ draw to a close it is difficult not to begin to feel immersed in the cosmic, space-age world that Menace Beach have created. This celestial world explodes into life on ‘Crawl in Love’, a cacophonous monster of a track that exhibits the very best of both the band and Leeds-based producer Matt Peel. Sounding like a fairground ride running out of battery, the song’s opening hook makes way for an array of immersive off kilter sounds and climbs to a euphoric riff-laden peak.
This other-worldly flavour infuses the rest of the record and is at its most effective when, as on ‘Crawl in Love’, Needham’s grungy guitar work is smashed together with Violet’s inventive electronica. Whereas the cyclical synth riffs of ‘Tongue’ and ‘Holy Crow’ are interesting enough and certainly do not detract from the record’s feel, the album really soars on tracks such as ‘Hypnotiser Keeps the Ball Rolling’, where scuzzy guitars and modular synths collide with a mumbled vocal to wonderful effect.
Like the opener, the album closer ‘(Like) Rainbow Juice’ features spoken word vocals over dreamy synth lines. This gives the album a feel of a concept record about the world of the ‘Black Rainbow Sound’, though to limit description of the record to a ‘concept’ does not do justice the array of ideas and inventiveness on display here. Menace Beach tour the UK this autumn and if their live performances capture the creativity and vitalism of ‘Black Rainbow Sound’, theirs is a show not to miss.
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