Coming just a year after the excellent Solar Anus, Årabrot return with an EP consisting of a couple of new tracks and covers of Death In June and Lee Hazlewood songs. It’s described by the band as ‘a composition dedicated to human misery’, which isn’t far off what you get with the EP, as the band sound resolutely unhappy.
It’s an unhappiness only slightly dispelled by the fact that the vocals on their covers of Death In June’s In Honour Of Silence and Kukuku, as well as Lee Hazlewood’s Pour Man are wonderfully redolent of Vic Reeves channelling Nick Cave via his impression of a club singer.
Despite that happy distraction, Årabrot do what they intend to and provide six tracks of low-key, piano-led maudlin caterwauling. Highlight of the album is The Baron, a five-minute slice of menacing, atmospheric sadness that isn’t a million miles away from Ulver circa Shadow Of The Sun. Whether this sets thing s up for the next full-length remains to be seen, but for now it’ll definitely do.
