OK, first up : WERP WERP!!! Daft band name alert! I'd be prepared to let that shit slide if these guys were actually from the Netherlands and played avuncular indie rock dressed entirely in orange but as that's clearly not the case some explaining needs to be done to clarify why this lot have picked a name that sounds like slang for the latest designer club drug. Nominative beefs aside these boys actually play a pretty infectious blend of guitar indie and classic pop that has somehow evaded success until now - that may be about to change as they pick up more and more airtime and based on the evidence spread across these two long players and they certainly have the potential to worm their way into the mainstream. The Uncles are a rare beast, a band that polishes up its sound whilst retaining a strictly organic feel at all times and one that straddles the line between riff-driven indie rock and freeze-dried electronica without fully committing to either - their reluctance to fully nail their colours to the mast has perhaps been what's kept them from the public eye until now but in truth it's more of a strength than a weakness and they've managed to nail a style that is unmistakably theirs over the course of these two stellar LPs. 'Out of Touch in the Wild' just came out so I gave their previous album 'Cadenza' a whirl while I waited and was very pleasantly surprised - this is some catchy shit right here, it'll raise a smile on the first listen but you'll soon find yourself coming back for repeated listens and picking new favourites for every occasion. They monkey around with time signatures on most of the tracks and whilst I'd normally dismiss this as clever bugger muso tactics it actually works really well and gives the music a really tight dynamic - they don't thrash around like early Bloc Party, the Uncles simply lay the foundations and built upwards but it's just as effective and some of these tunes really take off and fly when they get going. I've got a sneaky feeling that these dudes are actually straight-laced music college types who get their kicks listening to Toto and Level 42 and don't wanna have to dumb down their sound to win airplay - again it suits them and there's an 80s feel here but only in a compositional sense, a nod back to the era of bands like Thompson Twins and Tears for Fears when you could play pop with a full band rather than just two gay dudes standing behind a bank of synthesizers. And I stress that there's nothing retro going on here - theses guys have brought pop up to date rather than just hi-jacking a keyboard noise they liked back in 1983 and looped it for four minutes. 'Out of Touch...' is a worthy successor although a less consistent listen overall - they cast the net wider and tap into a slightly more commercial vibe a la MGMT on tracks like 'Bellio' but the record will ultimately be judged on its singles and the devastating twinstrike of radio gems 'Fester' and 'Flexxin' (these dudes like their one word song titles) seems to have already nudged them closer to a radio breakthrough. Their sound might be too light to tame the indie disco scene - there's at least three parts pop to every part of rock on here - but Dutch Uncles might have their sights set considerably higher than that and mainstream pop success in the vein of La Roux might not be beyond their repertoire. And even if that fails they're probably technically deft enough to get session work playing all the difficult bass and keyboard parts on the next Peter Gabriel record - in any case, both these albums merit your full attention for the time being. After all it is January so what the fuck else are you going to buy?
Check out : 'The Ink' from 'Cadenza' and 'Flexxin' from 'Out of Touch...' two quick fixes that might just get you hooked.
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