Back From The Bins - Guessmen Album Review

Back From The Bins - Guessmen Album Review

Guessmen

Album Review

The Guessmen are back with their second LP, Back From The Bins and upon hearing the album you’ll understand that the Newcastle, via Liverpool and Nottingham trio have really come back from the bins and taken everything they could find in it to produce a record littered with spectacularly assorted arty sounds.

The psychedelic synth sounds skilfully and intelligently pop, prick and buzz in a whirled and foggy mist of organs, trumpets, distorted guitars and vocals. However, unlike most electro-pop records, there has been great care taken in creating these odd sounds that provide the record’s ambience. Guessmen, despite only being a three-piece, use several instruments – Chinese Mandolin, Saxophone, Violin and a number of synthesizers to name just a few – and they have done very well not to make the record sound too cluttered.

There is a very obvious Captain Beefheart influence and it’s most clear when singer, Alan Edge – who sounds like a mix between a crazed crooner and Don Van Vliet – sings the incredibly psychedelic and imaginative lines of Black Balloons:

Pitbulls and poodles go toe to toe/EE’s coming with no known known’s/Rabbit got punched by an escalator/Lead balloons are fully blown.

Edge is a very charismatic frontman and it’s in his voice that the songs take their shape. Layered on top of mainly blues bass lines, it is difficult to classify Back From The Bins as a pop record. However, there is a typically pop method in the song writing that, for all the wild vocals and psychedelic lyrics, makes many of the songs easily accessible.

From the chilled out melodies of Warning and Weeping Willow to the heavy blues-inspired opener Animal Man Robot and the rather eerie love song, My Sugar – which sounds like a soundtrack for a seedy Gotham City alleyway rather than one for skipping and holding hands in the park – Guessmen have produced a wonderful mix of songs that effortlessly work together.

Whilst they do things differently from most electro-pop artists, there are very few songs that might frighten off casual pop listeners. Nonetheless, there is a whole lot of electro-psychedelic and jazz infused madness that give substance to the pop hooks and riffs that makes this record instantaneously catchy.

Jafar Hassan

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