( Read the first part of the review here)

Another trait shared with U2 is MuteMath’s ability to have a full and compelling sound even though no one instrument seems to be playing all that much. The ‘catchy as a cold’ first single, Spotlight showcases how they really do operate as a band rather than simply overdubbing a bunch of instruments on top of each other. Speaking of overdubs, what would a normal band use to build into the first big chorus – power chords? String pads? On Goodbye and Odds MM use violin and marimba/glockenspiels!

Meany’s world-weary lyrics about “our sad terminal democracy” on the latter seem to refer to how the band scrapped all the songs they’d already written on the road for this album and started again from scratch.

“I know it’s hard to say
We’ll throw it all away
But the odds are we’ll be better off”

Standout ballad Lost Year could almost be a Swell Season piano track but for the odd chord clusters in chorus. No instrument ever seems to be played conventionally or predictably for very long. Darren King’s drumming, often chopped up, distorted and compressed, is transformed on Pins & Needles into a gentle Jazz-like support for more string quartet oddness.

Closing track Burden opens like a driving INXS song but in the final few minutes becomes a plaintive and almost ambient meditation on the futility and fragility of the fallen condition. Built musically on the bridge of Spotlight, it’s a masterful Ecclesiastes like summation of the album’s theme.

“The devil is not the nature that is around us,
But the nature that is within us all”

This album is a grower, full of surprise and depth on every level.
You can buy Armistice here.

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(Photo: Max Roper)

What U2 are to the modern worship movement Mutemath could be to postmodern indie rock worship. Channelling it, perfectly expressing it, transcending it, and ultimately defining it. The band that every other band sounds a little bit like. The most influential band in the genre without actually being in the genre. Maybe.

I’m not saying they particularly SOUND like U2. Mutemath don’t really sound like any one of their closest ‘competitors’. For one thing there’s a organic feel that earths even their most programmed moments, giving them a humanity that David Crower Band’s relentless barrage of bleeps (AKA ‘Church Music’) never gets close to.

For another the funky atmosphere of the band’s native New Orleans is a missing ingredient in most bands but simmers away in the background here like a spicy pan of gumbo. The spirits of George Porter Jr. & Zigaboo Modeliste hover around title track Armistice like funky guardian angels. (In fact the only disappointment with the album is that the barebones remix of Armistice showcasing the Rebirth Brass Band isn’t here – but you can listen to it here or on Under The Radar’s podcast).

(Photo: Max Roper)

Album opener Nerve has singer Paul Meany’s most Bono-like lyrics

“This world’s like a wounded martyr worried if his commitment is gone”

but where U2 want to save the world MM just want to “set it on fire.”

Backfire kicks off with a beguiling constantly detuning guitar. Guitarist Greg Hill may be from the Edge school of minimalism but he paints his own pictures with his own colours.

Presumably taking it’s name from the uber-distorted bass intro Clipping is overlaid with skittering drums and classical piano arpeggios. In place of a guitar solo we get a string quartet swooping and screeching and capturing the song’s desperation and confusion perfectly.

(Part Two here)

buy Armistice here.

Thanks to Vitamin Z TV, AM Music Blog, and Max Roper (photos).

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