Through The Windowpane

There have been some really incredible albums released this year, just check the Mercury Awards list if you don't believe me, yet what is most impressive is the vast range of musical styles that have been on offer. Muse, Editors and Thom Yorke have all been favourites, as well as this wonderfull debut album from the multi-national Guillemots.

Although based in Birmingham, the band's members have been compiled from England, Scotland, Brazil and Canada. A most ecclectic mix you'll agree, and certainly a cosmopolitan blend that adds a rich variety to the songs. The thumping 'Trains To Brazil' is a personal favourite and benefits from a thunderous, driving tomm tomm rhythm and stacatto horn section that captures the capital's carnival spirit. The album's opener 'Little Bear' on the other hand recalls the sort of string arrangements and harmonic invention that made 'Day's Of Future Past' such a timeless classic, and that's what this album deserves to become; a classic.

You see, out of all the brilliant albums I mentioned above, Muse's bombastic and thrilling 'Black Holes and Revelations'; Editor's dark and brooding 'The Back Room'; Thom Yorke's troubled and claustrophobic 'The Eraser', 'Through The Windowpane' is the only album that can possibly be described as magical. The exstatic, shimmering and at times downright chaotic orchestral arangements, Fyfe Dangerfield's swooning, soaring vocals and of course the band, keeping at all together, cannot produce an album that is anything less than magical. It is an album to get lost in, an album that will sweep you off your feet. If only you'll let it.

No, man, I shouldn't like this as much as I do. I know this. Yet, considering I've spent the last few years of my life rallying against Britain's acceptance of Hard-Fi and Razorlight as the voice of my generation, I feel Guillemots were a dim light in the bleak, pitch black vacuum of modern not-actually-indie indie rock. This band, and this album, existed on the cusp of mainstream acceptance at the time of its release, and it should have been a revolution. All the stars were alligned; it was up for a Mercury Prize (but lost out to The Arctic Monkeys, 'cause, ya know, they needed more hype...), had the backing of the Pitchforkian forces that drive the minds of so many hipsters and, hell, this band even featured on some BBC2 program that was on after Paxman had finished bemoaning the recently-added weather section of his Newsnight show. My mind is blurred, but I believe these things happened at around the same time.

Guillemots should've been the band to break the country out of its wholesale love of the bland, mundane and uninspired. "...nothing on the radio that means that much to me"; really, Johnny Borrell, you odious twatrocker? I realise you've had Kirsten Dunst, but that doesn't give you the right to pen such hypocritical nonsense. You're part of the problem, Borrell, and you're the reason why Guillemots only slightly made it. At the very least, you owe Fyfe Dangerfield a pint, at the very best, well, how good is your knowledge when it comes to seppuku?

This should've worked. The glorious "Made Up Love Song #43" runs deep with pretentionless sentiment to what every songwriter wants to experience, if only to write a song about it. "Trains to Brazil" was, in the past, the future number one single. It even has whistles and kids voices in it, which is just the icing on this golden cake of a song. Number 36, people; that's where this charted, and you have only yourselves to blame. The strings on "We're Here" should belong on a Disney film, yet they fit perfectly in this weightless ballad of nothing. The title track even manages to venture near the crazy world of techno, yet the whole thing is still drenched in Guillemot sauce. "And if All", even if it is just a throwaway prelude to the closer, is still a stunning ambient piece when listened to alone (I once had this on repeat for like half an hour)...

"Sao Paulo"... no words.

In absolutely no way should this have changed the world, yet Guillemots' debut should've been the start of something great. And, yes, I realise that this is a completely incoherent rant that tails off madly towards the end, but sometimes I just really, really hate people.

Once in a while something comes along that really grabs you. "Through the Windowpane" is one of those somethings. It is an extraordinarily beautiful album by a group of highly talented musicians. "Through the Windowpane" could well be THE sound of the summer of 2006. This is such an immediately uplifting work, yet at the same time it manages to be complex and challenging. Guillemots have managed to write some superb tunes which include a lot of muscial experimentation (but not too much to get in the way of what is a collection of beguiling songs). The tone of the album varies from the slow, beautiful, string-laden "Little Bear" to the up-tempo near Jazz of "Trains To Brazil". Other standouts are "Redwings" and the epic "Sao Paulo". It's quite difficult to see where all the influences came from for this work. There's a lot of jazz and big band influence in some of the tracks, whilst I can also hear a similarity to The Cure at their most "poppy". In fact its hard to pigeonhole exactly what kind of music this is but that doesn't matter, the diversity in style and the quality of the songwriting mean that this one will appeal across the board. This is an excellent album, the sound of summer and something listened to in the morning that will set you up for the day. Go and buy this one!