Cymbals – The Age of Fracture

There’s always been something that gently naggs about Cymbals, something difficult to put a finger on. Perhaps it’s the tendency towards unusual vocal inflections, all that use of French, or the fluttering from sharp edged art rock on one song to warm disco funk on the next. Worst of all, however, is that for all the band’s potential to really get your goat, and no matter how hard you might try, they’re actually quite difficult to disregard.

The London based quartet are a refreshing tonic in these times of straight-faced, top-button-up vogue, in which a band must be deadly serious in order to be taken seriously, and in which a dynamic beat must by necessity be backed up with a complex mathematical formula detailing precisely just how much fun was not had in its composition. Cymbals aren’t afraid to wear the joy they find in making music on their sleeves without a sniff of irony, and what’s more, they can lay down a pretty hefty hook.

Their sound has undergone a fair amount of honing, a process that’s seen them dust off and piece back together their instruments after the down-the-stairs-tumble-racket that was their 2011 debut Unlearn. Add a brand new bass player and some more polished production and you end up with a band whose core rhythm section can iron over anything about the music that might otherwise niggle. Take for example all seven minutes of “The End”; it’s book-ended with spoken word French monologues, but salvaged by a pulsing synth track and deftly arranged, pointed melodies made for dancefloors. Likewise, on last year’s taster single “Like An Animal” Jack Cleverly’s vocals exhibit all different tones of peculiar, but with that bass solo, and that guitar hook, and those soaring keys, all vexations are quashed.

Elsewhere, flashy pop motifs illuminate the likes of “The Natural World” and “Empty Space” with a satisfying hark back to 80s disco and R&B, although with “The 5%” it becomes apparent that there’s a fine line between illumination and stuffing the disco ball right down the listener’s ear cavity. However, for every cumbersome dayglo bombardment on The Age of Fracture there’s a moment of well-crafted and easy to digest indie pop. On “Erosion” we hear something straight out of the Hook and Sumner school of guitar/bass interplay, and on “This City” Cleverly delivers a perfectly pitched tale of an unremarkable spiral into urban anonymity.

There is an aptness to the title here – as a band, Cymbals come across as being in their own fractured state; while their art-rock past lingers in the rear-view mirror, they seem caught at a fork in the road, with one way leading to lengthy dancefloor fillers and the other toward more conventional indie territory. But while their aesthetic hangs in the balance, they’ve proven on The Age of Fracture that they have it in themselves to achieve cohesion.