I was one of those people who managed to be both surprised at Super Extra Bonus Party’s self-titled debut winning the 2007 Choice Music Prize and yet not terribly shocked that the panel decided to award its completely un-Irish eclecticism. For me the album ran the gauntlet of indie-electronic ambiance to aggressive dance without establishing a cohesive trademark sound that distinguished a sonic identity for the band.
As loathe as I am to award a ‘grading’ to music, to me it was a 3/5 – the promise shown by tracks like immense Everything Flows wasn’t realised consistently throughout. Overall the LP was a refreshingly innovative if somewhat frustrating at times.
Step forward the ‘difficult second album’ Night Horses. Opening track Super Team Go! is an upbeat kick-off all wailing solo, distortion and drums – a tight starter that’s bound to be heard as background music on an RTÉ ad soon (that IS a compliment, honest!). Radar is an excellent lead single, the collaboration with Cadence Weapon reminds me of Why?’s Alopecia while Who Are You And What Do You Want (a collaboration with RSAG) sounds like the ghosts of Ian Curtis and David Byrne groaning to the listener through ambient beat driven electro-indie.
It’s not just the collaborations that stand out (Fight Like Apes’ MayKay comes across all Siouxsie Sioux in Eamonn and Heathers also make an appearance), and it’s certainly not just the ‘party’ numbers that impress. 2 is a heartbreaking, delicate little number that floats along with almost ancient oriental style string pluckings. A Midnight Summer’s Disco is a dream like outro to ‘Night Horses,’ which, like SEBP’s debut, is a hard album to review due to its sheer variety. As Ronan once said to me, a SEBP album is like a compilation LP performed by the one band. There are too many ideas here for any one overall sound to emerge, but ‘Night Horses’ is none the worse for it, and each track on its own stands up fairly well.
The eclecticism of this album is more cohesive, if that makes any sense, than the self-titled debut, with the rougher edges ironed out to produce a much tighter, layered effort. The multitude of ideas that are scatter-shot on the debut are more focused second time around. Night Horses definitely emerges as the much stronger of the two LPs by SEBP and those with any doubts should definitely give it a listen before passing their judgement on the band.
This is well worth checking out and is up there with David Kitt as one of my favourite Irish LPs of the year so far.
