Variety is the spice of life, and credit to Trwbador, their debut album ‘Several Wolves’ is a veritable musical menagerie with a smorgasboard of flavours. At times, it’s as howling mad as the French philosophers, Deleuze & Guattari, who inspired the album’s general concept. Thankfully, the album’s not nearly as impenetrable as D&G’s convoluted prose and in fact contains some extremely clever pop moments. The whimsical breeze of ‘Side By Side’ contrasts with the dense resonant bass, skipping electronics and a low dance beat provide a dark and murky backbone to the dreamy and laid-back ‘Start Your Car’, Angharad Van Rijswijk’s vocals striking an immaculate balance between meek and sweet.
Single cut ‘Breakthrough’, with featured artist ETTA’s clumsy rapping, sounds like something of an ill-fit against the looping light as air harmonies of ‘Pictures.’
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Tinkling glockenspiel notes and synth bass, coupled with stuttering, stop-start trip hop rhythms provide a striking foil to Angharad’s delicate vocals on ‘Tome to Me, Tomorrow’, and changing the tone entirely, the semi-ambient intro to ‘CO2’ introduces tweaks and twitters and overloading noise before bursting into a grating robotix workout.
Wildly varied and largely successful, it’s a brave and idiosyncratic album that marks Trwbador as a singular and unique act.
Trwbador Online
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