Weekly > Reviews
The Shortwave Set - The Debt Collection
The Shortwave Set formed in 2003 and promptly set about creating the album that I now see before me. How you would describe this album isn’t easy but I’m gonna go for junk shop psychedelia mixed with ye old sprinklings of melody and pop wonder.
If that sounds like a pretty strange description then it’s in keeping with this album that I quickly fell in love with, on receiving it in July of last year (hey what’s six months between band and amateur music hack). I loved the fact that even after listening to it ten or fifteen times in a couple of weeks (and believe me I did) each new listen saw me caught out when a zither popped into view or that accordion that you’d forgotten about from the last listen.
I really did want to review it at the time of it’s release but I couldn’t stop listening to it, since then it’s been foisted onto music loving friends at every opportunity and it’s only now that I’ve got it back to be able to sit down, re-evaluate it and give it the review it deserves that i’mwriting this.
The first song I heard was Slingshot (the first single) and it appropriately opens the album here in fine style, cut and paste is the order of the day but it still doesn’t sacrifice any of the kaleidoscope of instruments and noises in doing so that run through the rest of the album.
Sven Rokk follows that, and then it’s on to the second single I heard, Is It Any Wonder. Released as a ten inch single with two other album tracks it’s easily the best track on the album, the sort of track that gets straight under your skin and you find yourself singing in the shower and just about holding yourself back from singing in public places. It’s fair to say the Magic Numbers would walk over hot coals to try to get hold of this for their own.
After that you get the plucked banjo opening of Better Than Bad, the wonderful Repeat To Fade with the line “In my mind the DJ kept playing, so many times the faces I’m betraying”, yet again it’s brimful of melody and harmony and would be another potential single.
- The Shortwave Set
- The Debt Collection (2005)
- Category: Album
- Label: Independiente
- Reviewed by: Kev
- Published on: 08 Jan 2006
- Comments: 0
- Beat Surrender Rating:
Weblinks
Add to favouritesFigures Of 62 sounds like it would give the Beach Boys a run for their money for the majority of it, it then descends into all kinds of craziness for the last fifteen seconds, yet again though it kind of fits with the style of the album. Towards the end of the album you get In Your Debt which is an absolute epic track that features some beautiful guitar and after about eight minutes a sound that I can only liken to when you leave vinyl playing and the needle goes round and round on the middle section of the record, somehow it works.
The album closes in a brilliant, yet equally odd fashion. Yr Room sounds fantastic, plaintively strummed acoustic guitar and a lonesome female vocal make it the simplest track on the album. As I said it sounds superb yet all of a sudden she stops singing, laughs, then screeches in frustration and a discussion then ensues between the band as they discuss why she isn’t happy with it.
So sorry for the delay in telling you about this one if you haven’t heard of The Shortwave Set, but hopefully if you buy it and love it you’ll understand why it took me so long to get around to telling you about it!
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