A-side ‘Muscle Beach’ is perplexing – running from chorus to different chorus and patched together by completely different sounding verses, which while all well constructed individually (especially the counterbalancing of guitar chords and bleeps at the beginning), makes the song a bit hard to follow at first. Then again, the first chorus where the mariachi trumpets and harmonies come in is charming enough to win over the hardest-hearted of listeners. Still, it leaves you with a ‘what the hell just happened there?’ feeling.
AA-side ‘The Al Gore Rhythm’ is more of the same, featuring at the beginning a vocal battle between the lovely Laura-Mary Carter (of Blood Red Shoes) and what sounds like Wall-E, which in case you’re wondering is something definitely worth hearing. The once again crazy irregular beat and erratic guitar lines give the song a School of Language intelligent guitar pop feel, which if not catchy at first is at least pretty intriguing.
Ollie Khakwani
