There is a grey area between knowing playfulness and extreme schizophrenia and that's where Do Me Bad Things live.
With their razor sharp mid-song genre shifts, from manically thrusting 80s metal riffing to the sax solo territory of Steely Dan jazz rock and back again, plus a tempo change and a twiddly solo thrown in for good measure, they're not shy about reminding you of their jawdropping musical wizardry and encyclopaedic knowledge of pop.
Which is a bit of a shame actually, because when they take their foot off the show-off pedal for a moment they're capable of the truly graceful economy of ‘Suburban Flame'. Likewise their palpable frustration at not being able to go on a noodling rock odyssey all the way through ‘Off The Hook' gives it a crackling tension and makes the noisy bits far more exciting.
But when the balance is wrong, like the guitar pile up that is ‘Sprezzatura' or the chugging-genre-exercise-with-occasional-jazz-chords ‘The Daily Grind' your head starts to sag under the weight of artiness.
As an album it's like going on holiday to the English seaside - when the sun comes out it's glorious but you have to spend far too much time peering forlornly amongst the clouds waiting for it to appear.
-
6Julian Ridgway's Score