How right, in many ways, that the band which created what I thought was the most anonymous shoegazing album, namely their Creation debut album Everything's Alright Forever, would turn around and deliver a brilliant follow-up which would show that they owed nothing to easy and obvious typecasting. Sometimes it just takes a little time.
Martin Carr, the non-singing but has the gently voiced Sice to do that for him guy who was the band's driving force, was setting himself up for a fall in many ways with Giant Steps. Naming your record after one of the more hallowed jazz albums out there is a bit snarky, but hell, if the Replacements could call one album of theirs Let It Be, anything is possible. Also, on the face of it Giant Steps sounds like dilettanteism central -- techno, string-laden pop, Dinosaur Jr. style grunge, the indie groove, jazz, etc. -- so expecting it all to work together just fine can't happen, surely.
Oh, but did it ever. And I think the reason why I like the Boos' Beatles/Beach Boys fetishizing over that of the Apples in Stereo or…well, pick your Elephant 6 band, frankly…is that the Boos don't stop there, that they do work in all sorts of different things and play around with the entirety of musical history rather than just an overly romanticized bit and do so in a way that feels right, as opposed to 'behold, my calculated stab at range.' At this point in modern pop music I think it's more than clear that people can and do listen to everything they can for the good bits, rather than always aiming to be some sort of eternal purist, and bring that to the fore if they make music. Maybe not all the time, granted, but often enough! And that's what I get from Martin Carr -- breadth and depth both.
It's why the gentle semi-summery until you listen to the lyrics "Wish I Was Skinny" can follow on from the dub undercarriage of "Upon 9th and Fairchild," why "Leaves and Sand" can explode at the end so brilliantly with both guitars and horns, why "Barney (…and Me)" is both a New Order homage and something which doesn't sound like New Order at all, but its own surging, snorting and uplifting build of a tune, and can have a tag chorus line like "Faye Dunaway" just because. The same way Sice can sing about listening to the Beatles while trying to escape the grind but still can feel "the hate welling up inside." Grinding noise, weird electronic sample collages, sweet poppish lullabyes, sure! Isn't that what people regularly do these days anyway? They don't? How depressing.
And then there's "Lazarus," the single which previewed the whole thing and which served notice that far from being lost in the post-Pearl Jam morass and the Suede-inspired reign of Britpop, the Boos were going to be around and how. Though unfortunately trimmed back here -- the single version really is the one that needs to be heard to get the full sense of power -- hearing the feedback and the like melt into a slowly growing dub surge that gets more and more powerful and loaded and tense until it all bursts forth with trumpet and a triumphant blast of feedback…and then the singing begins, and Sice's little boy lost voice is the perfect contrast and hook.
Boo forever? Oh hell yes.