Alpha Male Tea Party have a daft name. They’re from Liverpool, and describe themselves as a “(fucking) loud instrumental band”. ‘Health’ is their third album, and they recon it’s their best work to date. Well, of course they do. But what’s with the cover art?
The first track, ‘Have You Ever Seen Milk?’ begins in a classic post-rock style, all chorus and delay-drenched guitars chiming against one another in a sea of reverb, but then it’s feet onto the overdrive pedals and things take a sharp turn for the more abrasive. ‘Ballerina’ brings the riffs, and if ‘Have You Ever Seen Milk?’ calls to mind AndSoIWatchYouFromAfar, ‘Ballerina’ is more That Fucking Tank in its twisting structure and sinewy noisemongerous attack.
On ‘Health’, AMTP explore dynamics and divergences, contrast and juxtaposition: there’s a superabundance of texture and of tempo changes, and between the tense, overloading Shellacy math-rock rackets, there are brilliantly-worked breakdowns and expansive passages which drift and eddy before, at the most unexpected moment, they’ll turn on a single beat and crank it all back up to eleven. The snarling bass that tears in at the explosive climax of ‘Don’t You Know Who I Think I Am’ is gut-churningly dense and ragged, and in some ways encapsulates the detailed dynamics of ‘Health’.
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The press blurb suggests that they’re ‘a little older, a little wiser, more full (dad)-bodied and muscular’, and asks ‘is this the sound of Alpha Male Tea Party leaving their wisecracking youth behind and finally coming into their own as serious contenders?’
Maybe it is.
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