Logo
DiS Needs You: Save our site »
  • Logo_home2
  • Records
  • In Depth
  • In Photos
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Search
  • Community
  • Records
  • In Depth
  • Blog
  • Community

THIS SITE HAS BEEN ARCHIVED AND CLOSED.

Please join the conversation over on our new forums »

If you really want to read this, try using The Internet Archive.

Bishop Allen

Grrr...

Label: Dead Oceans Release Date: 16/03/2009

45947
spawk by Alexander Tudor March 13th, 2009

Thankfully no-one’s dubbing Bishop Allen 'This Year’s Vampire Weekend', because it would be nice to see their jaunty charms discovered slowly, rather than being foisted on us all through adverts and hype. There are hints of flamenco and barbershop in their music, the guitars often sound Hawaiian, and the percussion often includes marimba, but pastiche never swamps any given song. If this means anything to you; they’re like the Bonzo Dog Dada Band without any laugh-out-loud moments (BDDB: genius psychedelic genre parodists from St Martin’s, who inspired Monty Python, and wrote some of their songs).

Twee without being cloying, Bishop Allen have dropped any signifiers that might make us think Tilly & the Wall (the clattering percussion, and urgent male/female vocals), and manage to present their light-hearted lyrics as sincere. Plus, unlike Tilly and !Los Campesinos!, there isn’t that uncomfortable feeling that this is going to look awful silly when they’re pushing thirty. Okay, on ‘Roofop Brawl’, “the birds are singing / the bees are stingING!”, while ‘Tiger Tiger’ finds the singer being told to “…imitate the action of the tiger / or imitate the action of a snail / snap your teeth and smile a little wider / or leave behind a lovely silver trail…”. It works, though. The latter is spoken/sung over squeals of merrily dissonant violins, and feels like a message to anyone who should get on and write that book / learn that guitar instead of talking about it… rather than being addressed exclusively to young folk in cardigans and hairgrips.

‘Cue the Elephants’ is a personal favourite, partly because of its resemblance to the song ‘Belle & Sebastian’ off that first EP. With a few deftly observed details about a girl sulking for some unknown reason, and the imagined consequences of her walking away (in Disney-vision) the incongruities bring the scene to life. Elsewhere, ‘South China Moon’ and ‘Dirt on our Shoes’ have some of the strongest, most anthemic choruses, and perky guitar breaks, representing more of a continuity with the previous material, on which they sounded more indebted to Galaxie 500. It’s hard to see this taking over the world anytime soon, but you can see Bishop Allen growing quietly.

  • 6
    Alexander Tudor's Score
Log-in to rate this record out of 10
Share on
   
Love DiS? Become a Patron of the site here »


LATEST


  • Drowned in Sound's Albums of the Year 2025


  • Why Music Journalism Matters in 2024


  • Drowned in Sound is back!


  • Drowned in Sound's 21 Favourite Albums of the Year: 2020


  • Drowned in Sound to return as a weekly newsletter


  • Lykke Li's Sadness Is A Blessing



Left-arrow

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy

Beware

Mobback
44943
44952

Harmonic 313

When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence

Mobforward
Right-arrow


LATEST

    news


    Drowned in Sound's Albums of the Year 2025

  • 106149
  • news


    Why Music Journalism Matters in 2024

  • 106145

    news


    Drowned in Sound is back!

  • 106143
  • news


    Drowned in Sound's 21 Favourite Albums of the Y...

  • 106141

    news


    Drowned in Sound to return as a weekly newsletter

  • 106139
  • Playlist


    Lykke Li's Sadness Is A Blessing

  • 106138

    Festival Preview


    Glastonbury 2019 preview playlist + ten alterna...

  • 106137
  • Interview


    A Different Kind Of Weird: dEUS on The Ideal Crash

  • 106136
MORE


GREATEST HITS

    review


    Sharon van Etten - Are We There

  • 95658
  • Playlist


    Playlist: Summertime Sadness

  • 100688

    feature


    Portishead discuss Third

  • 34958
  • feature


    Foals: "We're going to get weirder and weirder"

  • 26160

    review


    Biffy Clyro - Only Revolutions

  • 55003
  • review


    Coldplay - Ghost Stories

  • 95631

    news


    An Open Letter to Ryan Adams

  • 14604
  • Playlist


    Our Favourite Tracks of Q1 2015

  • 99412
MORE

Drowned in Sound
  • DROWNED IN SOUND
  • HOME
  • SITE MAP
  • NEWS
  • IN DEPTH
  • IN PHOTOS
  • RECORDS
  • RECOMMENDED RECORDS
  • ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
  • FESTIVAL COVERAGE
  • COMMUNITY
  • MUSIC FORUM
  • SOCIAL BOARD
  • REPORT ERRORS
  • CONTACT US
  • JOIN OUR MAILING LIST
  • FOLLOW DiS
  • GOOGLE+
  • FACEBOOK
  • TWITTER
  • SHUFFLER
  • TUMBLR
  • YOUTUBE
  • RSS FEED
  • RSS EMAIL SUBSCRIBE
  • MISC
  • TERM OF USE
  • PRIVACY
  • ADVERTISING
  • OUR WIKIPEDIA
© 2000-2025 DROWNED IN SOUND