For a band who, to outsiders at least, professed a desire to break through to the mainstream via the unfashionable (their adoption of 90s fashions for their ‘new rave’ genre a case in point), Klaxons�certainly have some mighty fashionable musical signposts.
Opener Two Receivers, for instance, is as direct a pastiche of Bloc Party’s newer sound as is imaginable. Elsewhere there are traces of Graham Coxon, The Cardiacs, The Flaming Lips, Gallon Drunk and even Sean Lennon, yet it all gels. There are no choruses as delightful as those on Golden Skans or As Above So Below but, on the whole, it’s a convincing ruse. Only when the quality control dips, as on the Chic-style filler of Forgotten Works, or the chaotic heavy-for-the-sake-of-it nonsense of Four Horsemen Of 2012, can critics who claim Klaxons to be all hype feel justified.
Mainly, this is a debut in the oldest sense of the word: there are two or three stunners, a couple of tracks that take work, and plenty of fat that could have been trimmed. But there is promise aplenty. If Klaxons can out-run the inevitable shortfall of interest that will follow in MOTNF’s wake, as some new scene is genetically modified in the press, they’ll do just fine.
