Neil’s Children – X.Enc

It’s taken 10 years for Neil’s Children to finally release their full length debut album.  Not quite a Chinese Democracy, but still a long while in which songs have brewed, band members have changed and styles have come, influenced society and left like a dodgy politician.

Kicking off the record is bass-heavy ‘Motorcar’.  The spoken-word, distorted vocals don’t really add much to the album as a whole, but the rhythms and tunes that mull under it speak volumes about their sound.

Getting onto the most perfectly crafted track from the album, ‘I’m Ill’ is quintessentially indie pop.  It should be blazing through the playlists of the NME and XFM.  Fast-paced and with the feel of a love soured, the song is filled with catchy hooks and topping it off, the bridge is covered with “oohs”.  The tone runs superbly against the majority of the album, although the word formulaic springs to mind in how it fits in the mix.

In a distinct contrast, ‘Communique’,   forgets lyrics and pop-indie beats to give nearly three minutes of solid instrumentals.  As far as I can tell, the entire track serves no purpose except to demonstrate the diversity of their musical palette through a cycle of drums, guitar and bass.  The sound may hammer its way through quite pleasantly, but ultimately, the song is filler.

This is an impression that can’t be quickly shaken off through the album.  There is very little variation from the instrumental collective, so many tracks begin to sound similar after a few listens through, the only variant being the two diverse tonalities in the record.  In that manner of speaking, it is a bit bi-polar.  The likes of ‘Indifference is Vital’ and ‘I Can’t See You’ lump together in the middle of the album so that newcomers to Neil’s Children won’t be completely lost whilst listening to it.

So what we’re left with in X.Enc is an album that doesn’t really fit in with the fad of fitting music into genres, yet it isn’t transcending anything in particular.  Amongst the grit of some of the harder, fan-centric tracks lie some gems of indie single brilliance.  However, there are only two different sounds in a music scene where indie bands are beginning to sound the same and a chance to stand out rests in breaking the mould like the MGMTs and Fleet Foxes of yesteryear.