Crikey. If you thought Black Box Recorder's deadpan deconstruction of Donna & Althea's evergreen - and lest we forget originally quite upbeat - reggae standard "Uptown Top Ranking" was the last word in deconstruction jobs just wait until you hear this.
Then again, I guess we shouldn't have been surprised. After all, Nottingham gal SCOUT NIBLETT's small, but gloriously imperfectly formed catalogue to date has found her making mincemeat of earnest terms such as 'indie' and 'post-rock' as she fillets all but the essential soul from her music and leaves little but the barest traces of melody to linger on.
On paper, that probably doesn't sound very attractive, but the few dashes of colour Scout leaves in there are just enough. Her "Uptown Top Ranking" makes a mockery of terms like 'skeletal', but - with an opiated Cat Power again springing to mind - the way she drones that chorus line : "No pop, no style, I'm strictly roots" has a curious strength when pitted against the most inchoate of electric guitar strums: and in these waif-like hands, this cover works a treat.
The two B-sides (if you can still call 'em that nowadays) are drums and vocal exercises, with producer Steve Albini gleefully dispensing with all niceties and getting the bass drum and snare to go 'whoomph' in a most satisfactory manner.
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The first, "Dare!" finds Scout intoning "My...morning...has...broken" like a tiny child struggling to learn literacy, and is far more predatory than you'd imagine. Final track, "In The Sine Wave", though, is the better of the two, with Scout taking on what sounds like an old folk melody over ultra-primitive toms and - mid-way through - a theremin sounding like a flying saucer with engine trouble. The way it pegs out at the end is especially cool and, again, while this hardly sounds like a recipe for an intriguing sonic diversion on paper, you'll be pleasantly surprised when you try it yourself.
So yeah, "Uptown Top Ranking" and its' cohorts are weird, at least partially wonderful and very much a case of the rule book in tatters. And surely that's what this game's about, ain't it? It should be, anyway, and that's a principle Scout Niblett seems to have grasped better than most.
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