Music Fan’s Mic’s Albums of the Year: Day 8
The Phantom Band - The Wants
Sometimes talent can overwhelm the listener. There’s so much going on, so many ideas deeply personal to the songwriter in ‘The Wants’ that initially, you’re left taken aback and at loss for thought. What is this world I’ve accidentally stepped into? It bogs you down, does this album: It tests you. Pass the test, and you discover a band with unrivalled ambition - one of the finest British talents out there today. Fail the test and you’re left with a headache.
The motivation behind making an album like ‘The Wants’ must come from either intense boredom or the band’s complete togetherness. To think that a group of young, idea-heavy Scottish souls could coerce and create something as cohesive and daring as this is somewhat beyond me. The sexual pulse of tracks like ‘O’ shouldn’t go hand in hand with the all-guns-blazing closer ‘Goodnight Arrow’, but it manages to. This sounds much like ‘Checkmate Savage’, the band’s 2009 debut and indeed you can draw several parallels between the two; the thick, harsh tones; the occasional eight-minute epic; the token breathtaking centrepiece…But the selling point of ‘The Wants’ lies in the fact that it reaches the heights of a debut many deemed incomparable. In fact, it could be argued that progression is made. The Phantom Band continue to defy logic, it would seem. [JM]
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