Volcano! – Portland Arms, Cambridge, 17 November 2008

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There seem to be a lot of bands around at the moment making what one could best describe as a wild kind of blend of improv, free jazz, post rock and funk. Releases in recent months by Tupolev, Skeletons, even of Montreal and (to a much lesser extent) MGMT, for example, have all featured at least some of these elements. Although they do remain somewhat uncategorisable, then, I would hesitantly suggest that Volcano! – who graced the stage of Cambridge’s Portland Arms last Sunday night – be considered as part of this tricky and tricksy breed too.

Engagingly friendly in an American-geek-ish kind of way, the three musicians that make up the band are all clearly massively technically proficient. They deploy their expertise on drums, guitar, bass, various bits of electronic equipment and vocals to produce a confusing, yet really quite engrossing, blur of sounds, music and noise. Set opener ‘Fairy Tale’ starts off all gentle falsetto vocals, then suddenly – wallop! – a wave of crashing noise hits, mixing time signatures and indecipherable lyrics to create a crazy yet somehow coherent incoherence.

The singer has a strange sort of fey swagger about him (coupled with a WWII fighter pilot moustache), and a voice which veers from the soulful and quite moving – as on their own take of the Otis Reading song ‘I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)’ (alternatively billed as ‘Otis’ and ‘I’ve Bin Luvn U Since Dsrt Strm’ by the band) – to the florid and ostentatious (I could hear similarities to the peculiar singing style of matey from Wild Beasts on ‘Africa Just Wants To Have Fun’) to the gibbering, manic and incoherent delivery into which ‘Wait For You’ descends (having started out in a surprising, and quite pleasing, jaunty countrified style).

Each song that they do seems to change tack at least two or three times within itself, so the listener is never bored. Exhausted trying to keep up, at times, perhaps, but certainly not bored… Other interesting bits thrown into the mix included: the Missy Elliott ‘Get Cha Freak On’ bit in ‘Fire Fire’; the great effect produced by the (very talented) drummer scraping his stick slowly up and down his cymbals on ‘Wait For You’; the lovely chiming post-rock guitar sounds on the beginning bit of “old track” (from 2005, we were told) ‘Fire Fire’; the touches of afrobeat in the guitar playing (particularly noticeable on ‘Africa Just Wants To Have Fun’ and ‘Slow Jam’); and the lovely bits of xylophone dropped in to ‘Sweet Tooth’.

Half way through the set-closing ‘Otis’ track, they indicate the impending and by now anticipated style-switch by telling us “this is the part of the song, ladies and gentlemen, where we move right along to the next part of the song”. That this announcement could have been made in the middle of any one of the mixed-up, strung-out, fascinating songs that made up Volcano!’s set tonight is by no means a criticism. We left the pub that night ready to face a new working week with ringing ears and plenty of musical food for thought.