If you've ever found yourself wishing that, just once, a contemporary band would bowl along and shock the trews off of you with every unexpected chord change, delight you with the uncommon breadth of their seamlessly-integrated influences and vindicate you with the cynical common sense of their bleakly witty worldview, Schnauser are your saviours. The Sound of Meat follows 2005's uncanny debut Kill All Humans and proves itself to be inarguably worth the wait within 20 seconds of its breezily dismissive opener, 'Cosmic Ordering Service'. Straight away, Schnauser set out their characteristic stall: a failsafe combination of melodious, inventive songwriting, energetically airtight musicianship, neo-psych bendiness and an irrepressible classic pop sensibility which coats the kinks in those complex compositions. Indeed, for all of its tempo twists and trenchant turns, The Sound of Meat boasts more hooks than the closing scenes of The Fog: the sarky sunshine pop of 'Everythings is Nice', the baroque prettiness of the celeb-baiting 'Homeless', the persuasively nodding gait of 'Twins of Evil' and the queasy tunefulness of the instrumental 'I Couldn't F*** a Gorilla'. Be sure not to overlook hidden track 'You're The Greatest Girl I've Ever Seen': diseased supperclub jazz worthy of Supersister.
Reviewed in Record Collector by Marco Rossi, UK.