JOHN GRANT
BELLA UNION
BOY FROM MICHIGAN
★★★★
No one can claim John Grant doesn’t give due warning of his fifth studio album’s curious nature. Boy From Michigan begins with two minutes of eerie synth sounds before a strictly programmed rhythm heralds a further five of 80s-influenced synth-pop, an opening line that may have come from Dickens and a saxophone solo nodding to his teens as much as the song’s autobiographical recollections. That it’s one of the more accessible tunes here says much about what to expect, but that doesn’t mean pleasure is elusive. Instead, these acts of public therapy come at one unfiltered, making them initially overwhelming but ultimately engrossing. Sometimes Grant’s enigmatically verbose – “Titania’s fritillary,” Best In Me begins, beneath layers of Kraftwerk synths and stuttering rhythms – and at other times he’s ROFL funny, as when he bitches on the more traditionally mournful Just So You Know about people who “don’t even pick up their dog’s poop in the park”. Mostly, though, he’s baffling and bewitching in equal measures, with Rhetorical Figure, for instance, like Sparks playing Joy Division post-punk with PiL’s guitars and Depeche Mode’s effects but not enough cash for synths like Van Halen’s Jump.
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Classic Pop
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