Django Django, are good, very good, and their self titled debut deserves the hype it’s been getting. Since the Scottish band released the double A-side single Storm/Love’s Dart in 2009, many critics have been eagerly awaiting their long player, and now that it’s here they’ve fairly soiled themselves with joy.
Music critics have a tendency to go bananas for anything that makes them feel involved. As David Lee Roth said “Music journalists like Elvis Costello because music journalists look like Elvis Costello,” so when an art-pop album like this, which is at once eminently smart, musically deft and incredibly danceable, we’ll love it forever because we can dance with pretty girls/boys while feeling like we appreciate it on more levels than anyone else.
Take the instrumental track Skies Over Cairo, which lays a bed of a classic 12-bar blues progression then tweaks it to run a harmonic minor scale riff to bring an Arabian dance-hall feel to the song. The whole album is similar; tricky without ever letting up on accessibility or the urgent four-to-the-floor rhythm and power chords that make it so much fun to listen to.
All the tropes of the art-pop bedroom project are in place – the slightly nerdy members, the big glasses, the shitty rotoscope film-clip, the pedigree (one of the members is the brother of the Beta Band’s keys player, an influence they wear on their collective sleeve) but with one important caveat – Django Django are a really good band, who care about songcraft, and have written and produced a record that reflects this.
It’s a psychedelic, disco melting pot with dashes of Bo-Diddly, rockabilly and Beach Boy swagger, which is so easy to listen to it makes you nostalgic for the video game tunes from your childhood while propelling you towards the dancefloor.
BY LIAM PIEPER
Best Track: Default
If You Like This, You’ll Like These: BETA BAND, METRONOMY, DIRTY PROJECTORS, DURAN DURAN
In A Word: Excellent
