Vital Idles - Left Hand (2018)

Following practice room and bigger-budget recordings with Glasgow engineer Andy Monaghan, Vital Idles took complete control of their debut album, with Edwin Stevens (aka recording artist Irma Vep) providing an outside perspective on the hermetically sealed group's music. Engineered by Stevens and MacLean, 'Left Hand' crackles with a raw, punk approach to writing warped pop songs that don't just talk of disorder but often actively demonstrate it. At the heart of 'Left Hand', the beating pulse in the tool box, is a conflict never resolved. Higgins manages to create dialogues that she narrates both parts of, Dada-ist songs that seem obfuscated by layers of meaning that, when taken on their own terms as evocative mini-worlds, reveal themselves to be pieces that have an internal melancholy and logic. Like Gertrude Stein growing up on Dunedin pop groups, peel away the deliberate awkwardness and 'Left Hand' reveals itself to be a book of complex, literary short stories at pleasing odds with the wired, no-frills melodic thud MacLean, Lynch and Walker dine serve.

Tracklist:

01. A Premise
02. Solid States
03. Chains
04. Fall into Shape
05. Waxes Colder
06. Carve a Bat
07. Cave Raised
08. Blue, Black & White
09. Time Free
10. Rising Damp
11. Geraniums
12. Like Life
13. Now & Again
14. The Scenery