Django Django
5/5
The arrival of Django Django’s debut album is almost a riposte to the recent onslaught of hot tips for 2012. The Scottish four-piece have been tipped for great things for about three years now, and have been in no hurry to capitalise on the usually fleeting cloudburst of attention that sustains and ultimately suffocates many new bands.

They’ve clearly put the time to good use, experimenting with songs, sounds and structures to produce an album with an impressive breadth of ambition but a recognisable aesthetic at its core. DD’s thing is loud, saturated psychedelia which wisely avoids the kooky and aims instead for the sono-nautical.

The most common reference point when discussing DD is the Beta Band (little surprise since their drummer is the brother of Beta boy John Maclean). But DD find a jollity in failure and existential horror, where the Betas could be consumed by it. Witness ‘Default’, which joins the likes of Love’s ‘The Daily Planet’ in the ranks of chirpy-sounding masterpieces with what the Scots refer to as ‘heid-in-the-oven’ lyrics. Elsewhere, the warm, burbling synths of ‘Waveforms’ are given melodic bite by a memorable vocal that prevents the track from drifting off into irrelevance. As giddily playful as this music is, it’s also fiendishly clever.