Mermaid Chunky – ‘Slif Slaf Slof’ overview: brilliantly eccentric avant-pop

LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy was in a espresso store when he heard a tune from Mermaid Chunky’s deeply weird ‘VEST’ EP, prompting him to signal the Gloucestershire avant-pop duo to his label DFA. Introduced with that probably career-launching endorsement, a brand new band might be forgiven for firming issues down. As a substitute, Freya Tate and Moina Moin’s debut album ‘Slif Slaf Slof’ is even weirder: a startlingly humorous, brash mixture of folks, home and psych-pop which – for all its eccentricity – has actual goal and coronary heart.

‘Slif Slaf Slof’ centres on the surreal, character-driven lyrics of Tate and Moin. On album spotlight ‘Chaperone’, Moin – forged as a divorced audiobook creator from the Deep South – drawls earlier than a packed Wembley Stadium: “my bosom is increasing a lot that I can hardly see y’all faces.” Tate’s accompanying chants (“journey that pony, smack that booty”) have a spontaneous really feel, like she’s barely accomplished them earlier than bursting into laughter off-mic. All through the album, their twin vocals span melodic singing, spoken phrase and barked, David Byrne-esque ad-libs.

Instrumentally, the album attracts a line between completely different conceptions of ‘occasion music.’ The euphoric opening observe ‘Céilí’ takes its identify from conventional Scottish and Irish folks dances, starting with a easy melody on Moin’s recorder. Because the melody is looped and layered, ‘Céilí’ morphs right into a digital-age interpretation of early ‘dance music’, joined by the squelching synths and mid-tempo beats that dominate the album. It’s reasonably transferring, and a robust throughline for the report: illustrating how folks have felt this identical pull in the direction of dancing collectively since time immemorial.

This fusion of various sounds in longer, multi-phase tracks additionally gives ‘Slif Slaf Slof’ with actual emotional depth. The music accompanying the story of a time-and-space-travelling dancer in ‘Tiny Gymnast’ is led by a trembling sustained organ, abruptly playful within the oompah primary verse, then impossibly assured with the swaggering synth groove outro. It roughly charts the dancer’s surreal coming-of-age story, but in addition factors to the unhappiness or uncertainty that will lurk behind the album’s extroversion and theatricality. That is additionally an album the place temper and tone can activate a dime: the creeping agitation of ‘Nature Woman’, with its chilly, metallic stay percussion sitting oddly on the digital beats, is abruptly warmed by Moin’s craving saxophone.

When this instrumentation is stripped again for the purely acapella ‘Medieval’, the observe feels barely misplaced. There’s the identical offbeat lyricism – “are you a woman with a cone in your head?” – and sense of motion due to the pulsing, layered vocals, however it feels flat and uncovered in comparison with their incorporations of those folks sounds into longer, extra dynamic tracks.

It’s this that makes Mermaid Chunky really feel particularly thrilling: their eager sense of tips on how to convey disparate musical concepts collectively. Whereas ‘Slif Slaf Slof’ largely presents itself as foolish, eccentric enjoyable, the album’s mixture of innovation and emotion makes it value taking severely.

Particulars

• Label: DFA Information
• Launch date: September 13, 2024