Archie Bronson Outfit – Coconut

Archie Bronson Outfit - Coconut

You would never mistake a track by the Archie Bronson Outfit as a Bob Dylan number. Yet whatever the “thin, wild mercury sound” Dylan strived to create for all those years actually sounded like in his head – or on Blonde On Blonde, the record on which he felt he came closest to realising his musical imaginings in exterior reality – it’s a description that seemed equally fitting for this Wiltshire trio’s previous album, Derdang Derdang.

In tracks such as ‘Modern Lovers’ and ‘Got To Get (Your Eyes)’, it was frequently a fraught, claustrophobic affair that could leave listeners’ stomachs feeling tight and skulls tighter still. Guitar lines sparked, drum beats cracked, vocals cut through the air. It was a thrilling LP that seemed to capture the cold light of an overcast morning reflecting off smashed glass and shattered mirrors.

Four years on, the band’s third album, Coconut, still has both that exciting sense of knife-edge volatility and the bluesy roots that were evident on their debut, Fur. This time, however, it’s delivered in the form of a rather more solid, cohesive sound – and brilliantly so.

The fuzzy, psychedelic riff that opens proceedings in Magnetic Warrior, joined a few seconds in by a heavy bassline and a Caribbean beat, form a real statement of intent. Indeed, with first single Shark’s Tooth underpinned by a highly contagious military beat and ‘Hoola’ provoking involuntary shoulder-shuffles from anyone in its vicinity, this is a record that has a true groove about it.

‘Chunk’, a slightly sickly-sounding gloop of synth-beat, is unfortunately out of kilter with the rest of the album. But this is only one brief duff note, and it’s easily forgivable given the charming melancholy of ‘Bite It and Believe It’, the chilling undertones created by titling the warmest tune on the album ‘Hunt You Down’, and the driving force of ‘Harness (Bliss)’.

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