This Is All Yours＜Colored Vinyl＞

The 2012 Mercury Prize winners begin their sophomore outing with the subversively titled "Intro," a four-and-a-half-minute highlight reel of what's to come that pairs the monastic chanting that prefaced An Awesome Wave's first single, "Fitzpleasure," with a pastiche of new age and worldbeat-blasted ambient pop that suggests Mogwai by way of Peter Gabriel's Real World studios circa 1990 -- it's both planetarium laser light show and art installation ready. The muted yet equally heady "Arrival in Nara," all fingerpicked electric guitar and diffusive synths, and its more muscular yet no less monkish second half, "Nara," do little to rein in the holistic atmosphere that's so decisively laid out in the remarkably potent This Is All Yours' opening moments, which makes the arrival of the punchy, carnally minded "Every Other Freckle" and the meaty, Anglo-Motown thump of "Left Hand Free" so thrilling, but hardly unexpected. After all, this is a band that proved with its debut that it can go from icy, distant, and often excruciatingly beautiful to downright feral at the crack of a snare drum (or pots and pans, as the group's humble, dorm room beginnings often required), and This Is All Yours does little to tarnish their reputation as choirboys with dark passengers. That penchant for edgy refinement, along with frontman Joe Newman's elastic voice, remains the band's most effective weapon, but it's hard to pinpoint where and when that magic occurs, as it's so effortlessly woven into the group's sound. It's somewhere in between the autumnal and apocalyptic, Miley Cyrus-sampling "Hunger of the Pine," the bucolic, recorder-led "Garden of England," and the oddly soulful, midnight-black posturing of "The Gospel of John Hurt," and it gets under your skin, where it somehow manages to both hurt and heal. ~ James Christopher Monger

〈マーキュリー・プライズ〉で最優秀英国アルバム賞を獲得した初作から2年。そのままスター街道を突き進むかと思いきや、メンバーの脱退などトラブルに見舞われていたアルト・Jが無事に2作目を発表しました。モダン・トリップ・ホップやチル&Bとの同時代性を強く感じさせつつ、あくまで基調となるのはアコースティック楽器の音色。マイリー・サイラス“4×4”のネタ使いで発表前から話題を呼んでいた“Hunger Of The Pine”も、蓋を開ければべス・ギボンズのソロ作みたいなフォークトロニカ・タッチの仕上がりです。たびたびレディオヘッドと比べられてきましたが、もっと突っ込んで言うと今回は『The King Of Limbs』に似た深遠さ。音数が少ないぶん、想像力を掻き立てられます。
bounce (C)武田晃