If Antwerp, Flanders had been twinned with Austin, Texas then it would perhaps go some way to explaining why certain similarities do exist between Sukilove and Spoon. For much of Drunkaleidoscope the Belgians operate in that self-same musical theatre as the one favoured by their distant American cousins. It is the one signposted Mystery Zone and it invites the listener into a world inhabited by dry, quirky rhythms and taut, angular beats that often stop and start in the most unexpected of places. It is big on economies of scale, counter intuition and an eager need to impress with its confluence of style and imagination.
With its long, loping stride and low-down dirty groove ‘Calm’ makes such steady progress down that particular road it is at first a struggle to keep pace. It hands over Drunkaleidoscope’s baton to the contagious proto-funk of ‘Somehow Someday’. It all starts so very well. But by the time we get to ‘Lancelot’ that tight muscular feel has given way to something altogether more loose-fitting. Like a budget digital camera in low light conditions, the music then struggles to maintain its focus. ‘Lancelot’ itself, with its lopsided shuffle, could have easily been left on the cutting room floor of Beck’s Odelay. The Sukilove mainman Pascal Deweze and his ever evolving community of Sukilove sidemen then trade their earlier precision and cutting edge for a random wooziness which first gorges on the excess of progressive rock before nodding out to some rather benign yet languid electronica. The concluding ‘You Are All I Want From You’ is most notable for the versatility of Deweze’s voice which by now has mutated into that of Glenn Tilbrook.
Nearly a year after Drunkaleidoscope was first released in mainland Europe, Sukilove’s fifth album has finally reached out over the English Channel and is now about to set foot on British soil. The often vapid noodlings of its latter stages do make you question as to whether such a wait was really that worthwhile. But that would be to forget the record’s earlier, opening songs whose infectious hooks and enduring streamlines suggest there may still be much more to come from Sukilove.
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Drunkaleidoscope, the brand new album from Sukilove, is released on Jezus Factory Records on 14th October 2013
