There is no other band, on earth, like this one.
Once renown for their costumes, synchronized dance routines, daft stage names
and generally being a bit too wacky for most listeners, Aleks and the Ramps have
done what few bands can manage, which is release the album of their career
seven years into it.
Facts sees the band dial back the weirdness and focus
on songs, hooks and sounds. Accessibility and consistency have never been
overarching goals for this band but Facts
has both in spades, though instead of using these qualities to increase their
appeal and audience, it’s as if chasing fidelity and getting tuneful are tools
in an ever-increasing arsenal of weapons a battle against mediocrity. The
breakthrough triumph of Antique Limb from 2010’s brilliant Midnight Believer album was passed off
in interviews as an accident by Aleks Bryant, but Facts makes him into a total liar.
There are few bands who could be seen to be
‘reining in the weirdness’ and open an album with the lyrics ‘I came dressed to depress / It was my first
day of work at the Ministry of Excess’ (‘Crocodiles’), but the directness
and visual-heavy style of Bryant’s lyrics are only the most overt of the many
powers this band possess.
Over the last seven years The Ramps have been
prolific, each release sounding brighter and punchier than the last, but this
album sounds as if was born from a universe of its own, which, given the recent
replacing of two members, is not entirely untrue. There are still the entwining
lead guitar lines of Simon Connolly and warm melodies of Joe Foley’s bass to
push you through the imaginative and unpredictable twists and turns, while new
members Pascale Barbare’s (beats) and Sez Wilks’ (keyboards) contributions beautifully
back Bryant's warm close breathy vocals. Bryant’s voice and the band’s
production lends a sense of solemnity to the ridiculous images of advice he
gives ('Another night filled with
undergraduate dread / You sleep with a Super-soaker under your bed /And you pay
someone to impart these little truths / That any old reflective surface should
have told you / By now' – ‘In The Snow’), but unusually for such a large
band, they sound best when each member has roughly equal input. The daft
brilliance synth-pop of Bummer will
probably always sound fresh and unlike any other band and inadvertently serves
as a swansong for previous members Janita Foley and Jon Thija.
Despite the lead-off single Middle-Aged Unicorn
on a Beach With Sunset and its fittingly ingenious video receiving play, live
shows are always impressive and these songs with their carefree instrumentation
and meticulous construction deserve and reward all the attention they get. Songs
that take in walks in suburban parks, the Serengeti, outer galaxies, an
interplanetary Dad and the Redmond Barry reading Room at Melbourne Uni are
never going to come from another band, and for that we should be grateful for
the sadness, sacrifices, imagination and sheer talent that combined to make Facts.
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