Archie Bronson Outfit: Coconut

Archie Bronson Outfit: Coconut
London-based band Archie Bronson Outfit gained wide acclaim with their sophomore album, Derdang Derdang. The album was named fifth best album of 2006 by Mojo. The band went on to win South Bank/Times Breakthrough Award the next year. Now the band hopes for continued success with their third album, Coconut.
The first signature of Coconut seems to be exactly how noisy it is. The album still has some of the psychedelic garage rock feel that made Derdang Derdang so well liked, but now it’s being done with much more Sonic Youth-esque fervor. The songs that do not pump the noise level are the tracks that have the most obvious stamp from DFA Records co-founder Tim Goldsworthy. Those tracks tend to have a more disco-revival feel.
The eclectic genre-bending nature of the album reminded me of bands like Butthole Surfers or Public Image Ltd. But that description only works for the album as a whole, from track to track the comparisons change. “Chunk” sounds musically uncannily like Kool and the Gang‘s “Celebration”. “Wild Strawberries” has a Velvet Underground “White Light/White Heat” feel to it. The album’s closing track “Run Gospel Singer” is perhaps most bizarre of all. Applying a tradition gospel beat to a noise rock track that ends up sounding like Titus Andronicus.
Overall, Coconut is a hard album to get your head around. Each track brings something so uniquely different to the table that there is little feeling of cohesiveness to the project. The noisiness of the album is also disconcerting, making it nearly impossible to listen to in one sitting with inducing a headache. The album has plenty of good songs, but it clearly pales in comparison to Derdang Derdang.
Rating: 5.3/10
MP3: Archie Bronson Outfit “Chunk”
Buy: iTunes, Insound!

Leave a Reply