Star Sign Trampoline

www.sundaybest.net www.myspace.com/luckyelephantmusic

Hooray ! An album release that it’s slightly difficult to describe…Lucky Elephant (what would an unlucky elephant be ? One with a bad memory maybe) have been touted as providing sun-soaked melodies just in time for summer which is probably true. They seem to be Isle of Wight-based, but are closer to residents The Bees than Mark King of Level 42.

Thematically their thrust is urban living and the call of the wild (it says here) and the musical setting is a kind of spaced-out pastoral whimsy, not as close to XTC as you may suppose as they don’t have the latter’s angular quirks. Listening to these cuts conjures up animated kids’ TV shows more than anything else and no doubt that’s utterly deliberate.

The ingredients are supplied by these players – Sam Johnson on guitar, Wurlitzer and piano, Paul Burnley on synth bass and harmonium, Laurence Clack on stealthy drums and percussion. Plus French singer Emmanuel ‘Manu’ Labescat on vocals and melodica. The track ‘The Pier’ salutes and ponders upon Manu’s upbringing at the French seaside and the coming commercial tide.

Here we have an unusual aggregation that the mainstream media will be unable to categorise or pigeonhole. Given the band’s lyrical leaning towards coping with the hustle and bustle of urban life and the friction it visits upon the souls of us all, there is something to relate to for the listener. As such this group’s sound is the polar opposite to the frantic city rush of, say Talking Heads and has no arena-postulating DNA in evidence.

On the tracks included : ‘Lucky Elephant’ has a cartoony music-box lope propelled by warm piano and toytown percussion.  ‘Edgar’ has a sprightly guitar figure against a waltz beat and Manu’s Gallic tones appear. A summerday skip soaked in nostalgia and quite charming.  ‘Red Ties vs The Bees’ has schoolteacher piano and a tone poem of a vocal, semi-spoken. ‘Modern Life’ is a light reggae-set but dark sounding chug with trebly guitar figure overlay not a great distance from Bjork, for whom they should be definitely opening shows, on what we hear here.

‘Reverend Tilsley & His Magic Lantern’ sound like a future single that Radio 6 would play.

‘Burn Down The Acres’ as a tune is horribly close to Elton John, you almost expect to hear the voice of self-pity himself coming in ! Thankfully it’s an instrumental…

Much of the melodic work here evokes a lost Eric Rohmer film, none more so than ‘The Beginning’ which does evoke an awkward teenage romance story. Maybe the future will bring us more nostalgia-soaked music ? Depends how grim technology-driven life becomes, I guess.

So..four out of five for a different approach for this group. It won’t be to everyone’s taste but its unhurried fresh-air styling will find it fans

Pete Sargeant     www.fairhearing.co.uk