Listening to this album is like having a bucket of water chucked over you, Society Of Imaginary Friends absolutely drench you. First and foremost is Louise Kleboe’s vocals, swelling and soaring, snatching your ears away in its current, in its operatic grandeur. Which is matched by Alfie Thomas’ orchestral arrangements, and the odd appearance by a whole choir. You are engulfed by this powerful wide-screen sound. So, grandiose pompous stuff ? Well, not really; accordion, trombone, Hammond organ, electric violin, ud, drums and guitar also drop by throughout the course of Sadness Is A Bridge To Love, filling out a broader scope and helping to make the album interesting and different on a track by track basis.

The first two tracks show off some of the album’s range, ‘The Moors’ has Kleboe’s vocal switching from haunting bellow to a lighter croon, the strings flow in and out like the tide, some tension is ramped-up by sawing violin and then later there is release as the string section sounds like twinkling dust falling from the sky. On ‘Nursery Of Dark And Light’ some slight tambourine jangle, xylophone and the odd bit of accordion create a closer and more intimate feel, but there is also a sense of coldness, the production sounds huge, or rather the room the song was recorded in does. Later in the album comes ‘Night Of Power’, where Kleboe really lets go with the operatic stuff, wailing away in Spanish, (possibly Latin”¦ language isn’t my strong point, okay?), as a classical guitar picks away in mazy corridors. Wind ambience, a tense section of strings and accordion, and a violin playing a swift giddy melody accompany her, but just as the whole thing is set to explode, it trails off into a bassy throb that is reminiscent of Grails. ‘The Tide Of Life’ is scary, big organ keyboard chords ring out, with layered ambience fogging around, a violin entwines itself with the melody of the organ and there is an overall feel of restraint. Apart from the vocals, which are delivered in a chillingly manic way, a dark, angry, fucked-up flamboyance. But what puts paid to the idea of all this pomp and seriousness is the song ‘For Those Online’, a glorious moment of hilarity. The typical operatic flourishes from Kleboe are this time in service to lines like ‘You can skim through my Facebook/The stories are dark/The pillage and slaughter/Where the tide left it’s mark’, as the band play it dead-pan with some of the most epic crescendo and crashing grandiosity on the album. The lyric ‘Oooh, it’s like a car crash/That no-one survives’ near the end is the best line, due to it’s positioning and melodrama.

SOIF do have a signature sound, Kleboe’s vocal style can but only define the band, and the orchestral tendencies only amplify this, but SOIF have been able to vary the tone and the content of their songs enough for the album to remain fresh and interesting for it’s rather long 55 mins. 70%

Links Society Of Imaginary Friends [myspace] [band site]