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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Belgium's finest, 18 April 2008
Back in the days of Britpop you could have been excused for thinking we were the only country making music worth listening to; but you'd have been wrong. Along with Trappist ales and steel Belgium were exporting some excellent music in the form of dEUS whose 1999 album The Ideal Crash I still play regularly. The follow-up Pocket Revolution was quietly released in 2005 and was a bit of a disappointment if I'm honest. Does new album Vantage Point see a return to form?
Things get off to a good start with When She Comes Down, filled with the kind of grandeur you might expect, keyboards coming in to augment the instrumentation. Oh Your God comes at you much harder; reverbed guitars, punchy drums and hand claps and spoken vocals which soar into a big chorus. Eternal Woman is a beautiful ballad, with dreamy female backing vocals from Lies Lorquet of fellow Belgian band Mintzkov, which reminds me of some of their earlier work. Things darken again with Favourite Game's grungy sounding sinister guitars and chanted chorus. Slow starts well, featuring guest vocals from The Knife's Karin Dreijer Andersson, before descending into prog rock territory and a rather robotic sounding chorus and the album's other big track, The Architect, takes Buckminster Fuller, who developed the geodesic dome (think The Eden Project) amongst other things, as it's unlikely protagonist but it's multi voiced chorus makes them sound worryingly like a boy-band. Is A Robot has some of the extended instrumentals that made The Ideal Crash such a great album. That album also benefited from its quieter, thoughtful moments and Smokers Reflect is another great example of what dEUS do well. Guy Garvey from Elbow lends his vocals to The Vanishing of Maria Schneid another powerful track. Closer, Popular Culture has a similar grandeur to the albums beginning, a singalong chorus featuring what sounds like a children's choir but featuring some of the worst scanning lyrics I've ever heard.
All in all it's a mixed bag. dEUS have always been a genre bending band and how much you like this album may depend on which dEUS you prefer. Personally I could have done with more of the beauty and less of the bombast, but after several changes of line-up it's gratifying to see the band filled with confidence again.
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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
dEUS should play at Glastonbury, 19 April 2008
dEUS should have the opportunity to play on Glastonbury festival. dEUS will play on the Werchter Festival this summer on the 6th of July. I hope that people from the UK will discover dEUS which is for me a top band. Already active for about 20 years and with a lot of nice tracks.
Tom Barman is a talented guy not only for music but also as a cineast see the movie Any Way the Wind Blows.
Respect Mr. Barman. We're proud of you. Only 36 years old and you achieved a lot more then others already did.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
dEUS Mark 2, part 2 , 25 Jan 2009
dEUS quietly released two of the best albums of the late 1990s with 'In A Bar, Under The Sea' and 'The Ideal Crash' before disappearing from everyone's radar. In 2005, Tom Barman (who pretty much *is* dEUS in the same way that Matt Johnson *is* The The) returned with a comeback album 'Pocket Revolution', which saw half the band replaced and a slightly calmer, though somehow even more enigmatic sound. What had previously been schizophrenically genre-hopping was now split into more or less two opposing poles: smoky barroom ballads and dark travelogues like 'Bad Timing' and 'Sun Ra' where you wondered what the hell was going through Barman's mind...
Here's the next chapter, and it's obvious that the answers aren't any clearer. dEUS have always been a band that exist and encapsulate their own world, one of arty bohemia and melancholy, late-night regret, but also one underpinned with a vaguely frightening atmosphere of churning neuroses and split-second, barely repressed violent impulses. They totally immerse the listener inside the song's narrator's head, and they are also defiantly European - a song like 'The Architect' (Kraftwerk-goes-disco, essentially) couldn't and indeed wouldn't be written by any British band, which perhaps goes some way to explaining why Barman is such a perpetually overlooked figure.
He has the songwriting chops, however. It is true that dEUS' softer songs are nowadays more soporific than the tense noir they used to radiate ('Eternal Woman' and 'Smokers Reflect' are dolefully pretty but not especially attention-grabbing) but their harder tracks are getting ever more ornate and hypnotic. The languidly sinister, smeared guitars (reflecting the album artwork) of 'Is A Robot' and the krautrock-grunge 'Favourite Game' are cases in point here, as is 'Oh Your God' (spiralling Queens Of The Stone Age verses juxtaposed with an unexpectedly folky, rousing chorus). But the album highlight is undoubtedly 'Slow', which rides a rumbling Beefheartian rhythm to a unforgettably ghoulish, synthesised refrain. It sounds deeply sinister and deeply sad all at once.
You get the impression the set could have been a couple of songs longer, which is not something you'd ordinarily say in the age of overstuffed 79:59 double concept albums, but maybe it's for the best. Barman has crafted another portrait of lingering European ennui and nagging doubt, and then he gets the hell outta Dodge. A new album could (already) be on the way, apparently, so watch him do the same next time around.
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