Do You Imagine Things?

And what a result!

The guitars are in places heavier than previous works, but the album still retains the familiar mellow daydream lullaby qualities of the Alfie sound. There's no other band around today that sounds like Alfie; they're not chasing chart position, they're doing their own thing, and thank god for that! They're musicians' musicians, using every available instrument to wrap intricate musical layers around complex rhythms; there's so much going on it can keep you interested time after time after time. Lots of bands are experimental, but end up so 'out there' as to be unlistenable; Alfie have found the perfect balance of being unusual and unorthodox but still irresistably catchy. Stuntman, Chop Chop and Hey Mole are absolutely sublime.

If you get the opportunity to see Alfie live, you have to take it. They're emerging as one of the best bands in Britain today, and the future looks very, very bright.

Maybe not. Alfie sure have come a long way from their appalling, joyless debut collection of EPs to a surprisingly good second to this, and Do You Imagine Things is a stoned, relaxed, slightly hallucinating rambling walk through what can only be described as mad dreams. It starts with two very slightly and dream-like tracks, People is like lying on your bed doing nothing, whereas Stuntman has the weird edges to it that a dream does.

There's still acoustic moments, in Winding Roads and Mollusc in particular, but there's a greater fullness of sound and impressive use of technology to create some lush sounds, especially on Protracted and No Need. No Need in particular is a superbly bouncy piece when it lets itself get going.

Moving into the second half of the album, and ignoring the clumsy hit-and-miss Indoor League, Isobel is a wonderous 60's-style french horn based ballad with more than just a passing nod to the Beatles. Chop Chop is like The Reverse Midas Touch Part 2, only with 70s strolling key changes and what canonly be described as a stab at Gregorian monk chant to start us off. The closer of this album, Hey Mole, is a beautifully affectionate plea for a mole to "Get out into the Universe", one of the undelying themes of the album - to do your own thing. It has a superb sprawling guitar riff to take the place of any chorus, and as the vocal harmonies unfold themselves in this last song, Alfie have achieved what we never expected them too - vis. something not incidental and slight.

But listen to it again, and again, and again, and you find a classic. You find that every single song is perfect. "People" makes a great opener, introducing Alfie's new "Up tempo" movement. This is retained in the bizzarre "Stuntman", which is easily their heaviest song yet. Then we're treated to some classic Alfie with "Winding Roads", before a whole host of beautiful melodies and strange landscapes are painted for the discerning listener.

The last three tracks are possibly the best three songs of 2003. "The Indoor League" is my personal favourite, probably because when live, you don't want it to end. Also because it tells the story of a magical pair of shoes. "Chop Chop" is almost exactly the same as ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky," which may well be the highest praise avaliable. The album closes with a rock mini-epic "Hey Mole".

Like Radiohead's Kid A, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. For anyone who wants something a bit different and is prepared to stomach a disapointing first listen, I would reccommend this.