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(2022) Melt Yourself Down - Pray for Me I Don't Fit In
Review:
Like the familiar line about making music purely for yourself – and the addendum that if anyone else likes it, it’s a bonus – claiming to be entirely sui generis has long been an interview cliche. It’s a cliche recycled in the title of Melt Yourself Down’s fourth studio album, but that’s forgivable. For once, the band saying it might have a point. They’re nominally linked to London’s jazz scene: saxophonist and de facto leader Pete Wareham formerly played with BBC jazz award winners Acoustic Ladyland; Shabaka Hutchings and Tom Skinner have passed through their ranks en route to the justly acclaimed Sons of Kemet. It’s hard not to feel that the current vibrancy of said scene and the high profile of artists such as Hutchings and Nubya Garcia might account for Melt Yourself Down’s major-label deal: there’s something fairly improbable about a band named after an obscure track by the confrontational no wave saxophonist James Chance sharing a roster with Ronan Keating, Alfie Boe and Michael Ball and amiable Aussie bar band the Teskey Brothers; furthermore, a band whose main concession to commerciality has involved their Mauritian vocalist Kushal Gaya shifting to singing in English, rather than a hybrid of French, Creole and a language of his own creation. For all their pedigree, Melt Yourself Down don’t really deal in jazz. It’s certainly in their DNA. Although the sax on Pray for Me frequently feels as though it’s filling the space occupied in rock by rhythm guitar by churning out monumental riffs, there’s no mistaking the lineage of the sharply pointed interjections on Sunset Flip, or the atonal solo-in-miniature that erupts during Balance. In reality, they’ve spent 10 years attempting to carve out a space in uncharted territory bordered by punk, Afrobeat, funk and traditional Egyptian and Sudanese music. It’s a bold and fascinating idea. So bold, in fact, that their previous music sometimes made you wonder if was possible to put into practice. It feels wrong to criticise a band for being too eclectic, but there was something ungainly and jarring about the way 2020’s 100% Yes jumped from style to style: one minute its fusion of hammering drums and honking sax recalled X-Ray Spex, the next it was chucking out rhythms inspired by two-step garage or techno. There were exciting moments, but also a sense of fusion that didn’t quite fuse. — Guardian
Track List:
01.Pray For Me I Don’t Fit In
02.Boots of Leather
03.For Real
04.Nightsiren
05.All We Have
06.Fun Fun Fun
07.Balance
08.Sunset Flip
09.Ghost On The Run
10.I Got Time
Media Report:
Genre: funk, jazz, rock
Country: UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Note: If you like the music, support the artist
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