This week's CD choice
SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO
Temporary Pleasure
Wichita
****
I wonder how much vocalists on an album like this one get paid. A few hundred quid and a couple of bottles of beer for their troubles? Or does it involve a precise contract, complete with royalty breakdown, negotiated by stiff beancounters with an eye to a lucrative ad or soundtrack inclusion?
When compiling the hefty guest list for Simian Mobile Disco’s second album, chances are it didn’t harm matters that James Ford was involved. Aside from being one-half of SMD with James Shaw, Ford is also a producer who has worked his magic on the Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons and Last Shadow Puppets. He’s the kind of talent you probably want to keep in with.
But it's more than just the hint of a hefty discount on production fees the next time out that persuaded The Gossip's Beth Ditto, Super Furry Animals' Gruff Rhys, Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor, Yeasayer's Chris Keating, Telepathe and Jamie Lidell to lend their vocals to Temporary Pleasure. As Ford and Shaw showed on 2007's Attack Decay Sustain Release, they have a fine handle on how to manipulate the terrain between indie and electronica.
Temporary Pleasureis also a bit of a grandstanding monster. But whereas the debut was totally head over heels in thrall to sleazy and slippery beeps and bleeps, the new album sees the pair flexing their muscles and applying some finely toned pop melodies to the equation. This is where those guest vocals come warbling into view.
Cruel Intentions exploits the soulful blur of Ditto to flesh out a song that Roisin Murphy may be kicking herself she didn’t get first dibs on. Audacity of Huge has Keating supplying David Byrne-like yelps on a track that gets bigger and brasher as it rolls on. Taylor’s Bad Blood is as theatrically quirky as anything Hot Chip have done, while Pinball sets Telepathe adrift into a sea of minimal bliss.
For SMD and friends, the groove is always in the heart. www.my space. com/simianmobiledisco
Download tracks: Audacity of Huge, Cruel Intentions, Bad Blood
