It's only the second month of 2014 and I think I've found my favourite album of the year. Two and a half years after releasing their well-loved album A Different Kind Of Fix Bombay Bicycle Club is back with a fourth album. The record consists of ten beautifully produced and well thought of tracks. From the way the band progresses album to album, it is obvious that Bombay Bicycle Club is an unpredictable band. Started as a proper rock band, they moved to low-key productions in Jack Steadman's bedroom making acoustic folk songs for their second album Flaws to making indie pop music with catchy-as-hell bass lines, and who knows what they constitute as in this new album.
The thing that strikes me the most is the peculiar yet fitting influences of cultural music. Imagine Phoenix's North Korean influence in the hook of "Entertainment" but replace that with Indian and Middle-Eastern aesthetics throughout the whole album mixed with the usual 'indie' sound we are accustomed to. Listening to this album is like breathing fresh air. With the increasingly monotonous music scene, it's nice to hear something different and intriguing at first listen. "Overdone" is a hard-hitting song constructed around beats and loops that sound a lot like the music I listened to in middle school, especially the outro. Swiftly transitioning into "It's Alright Now", we hear more loops not just in the melody but also the lyrics; "It's alright now / I don't wanna wait" repeated over and over again. I finally realized who they remind me of, and it's Friendly Fires, but without the excruciatingly demanding vocals and the mental claustrophobia that can sometimes suffocate you from its intensity. These elements are carried out in the remainder of the record. But the most obvious song with Indian influence is "Feel", which off-the-bat sounds pretty much like a Western version of celebratory Indian music yet it's still highly accessible and so dance-floor worthy.
In "Home By Now" we can clearly hear the band's experimentation with R&B and electronic music. To be honest, it's a track I imagine Jack Steadman producing if he has a proper solo project. It's like a happier James Blake. There are also mellower tracks like "Eyes Off You" and "So Long, See You Tomorrow" in which they brought back duets with Lucy Rose, making it very reminiscent to tracks like "Still" and "Leaving Blues". In many of the songs, Steadman's quiet voice acts as a harmonic base for the feminine voices, while on others, the layers of his voice create a soothing atmosphere - a staple in the band's sound.
Judging by the music videos that came out, it is safe to say that the band has payed more attention to the visuals. The interactive video for "Carry Me" portrays the experimentation with loops by layering different timelines of stop-motion. While "Luna" shows a synchronised swimming team moving to the beat of the song and creating many shapes parallel to the album cover. In contrast to previous music videos, it shows that the band as a whole has become more active and picky when it comes to the supporting visual content, as Steadman mentions on various interviews.
Bombay Bicycle Club has progressed beautifully over the years despite the short time it took between each album release. Although So Long, See You Tomorrow took the longest, they managed to produce high-quality and innovative tracks, which some bands fail to do in a longer period of time.
9/10. (or maybe even 9.5, or a 10).
