Dark Captain Light Captain – Miracle Kicker

Dark Captain Light Captain are a six-piece band from East London, central members Dan Carney and Neil Kleiner started the band as a duo a couple of years ago, they released a few singles last year and an EP in June of this year and accrued the rest of their band. Their debut album Miracle Kicker features electronics, clarinet, acoustic guitars, drums, piano, violin, bass and harmonious group vocals, these are then layered together to create cyclical interlocking songs, with a dark sombre mood. What comes to mind is American bands like Bedhead or Pinback, their songs are made up of instruments that have been wound up and left to uncoil in synergy, like a clockwork mechanism, with echoes of minimalists Steve Reich and Terry Riley as each instrument simply works through it’s allotted note combinations and rhythms. Which isn’t to say that Dark Captain Light Captain is a bloodless mechanism, there’s a darkness here that speaks of deep winter, wet streets, and heartfelt sighs, which the cleanly recorded ably played instruments help to highlight.‘Parallel Bars’ is a quintessential example of their style, crisp funky drum work, group vocals with reverb, electric guitar wahing and twanging, muted strummed acoustics and electric guitar, and some space in the mix. The vocals have an overt Englishness, almost sounding like a parody, and they are sung soft and whispery but with a real clarity. ‘Questions’ is notable for an overtly sentimental melody which is accentuated by some strings, introspective and emotional, it seems to stick out in the middle of the album (not necessarily in a bad way). Almost every track here starts off with two acoustic guitars - one in either speaker - picking out the melody (with slight deviations in notes) of the overall theme of the song. Indeed, there is a ubiquitousness to this album, the funky yet subdued drumming, the group harmonies that stay around the same few notes, the acoustics as mentioned before, the sombre mood that pervades, all are stated and re-stated throughout Miracle Kicker, this can become wearying, a significant change to one or two songs would have done the world of good, but there are some obvious elements that the band could explore in the future. The electronic element here is subtle, it manages to feel natural and organic, entwined with the rest of the sound, ‘Spontaneous Combustion’ has backwards drums and synthetic, industrial-sounding percussion, and there’s rhythmic keyboard and drawn out synth sounds later on. ‘Remote View’ sounds like something from a 60s European movie, it has a treated horn sound blowing a lament, and guitar that is clearly indebted to a classical Spanish style. There is also an acidic psychedelic tinge to some of the tracks, but presented in a clear-eyed unnerving way.The band focuses on dark and depressing themes, which can be seen with the apocalyptic cover, the down-tempo nature, and the 1984 esque lyrical themes, and this can become tiring, especially when it doesn’t feel like there is enough variation in their sound. But Miracle Kicker is a good album, it’s dark allure will keep me coming back and the potential it shows is enough for me to want to know what they will do next. 65%Dark Captain Light Captain on MySpace