Swahili Blonde: Psycho Tropical Ballet Pink

- Dear God! Where do you even start with Swahili Blonde. Their ridiculously overloaded sound has so many different genres spilling out of it that I've heard the lead track off this EP described as surf-rock by one source then folk-dub by another and you know what? THEY'RE BOTH RIGHT!! Crazy. Look also for afrobeat, psych, krautrock, post-punk and no-wave, at least until you get tired. I find it easiest to group everything that Swahili Blonde does under the no-wave banner: the overweeningly arty, yet highly irreverent mess of discordant sounds seem to belong there more than anywhere else. Who is it making this cacophany, anyway? Her name is Nicloe Turley and you might remember her from those dub-punks WEAVE! Other members include Nicole's boyfriend that drug-addled, ever-itinerant guitar genius John Fruiscante, Duran Duran bassist John Taylor, members of The Like & if you believe the bio, folks from Dante Vs Zombies, Corridor and Devo. Yeesh, no wonder they've got a lot going on. To try and give you a more exact description of what they're doing - urg, where to begin? Each song on Psycho Tropical Ballet Pink crams in quite a lot of causers of mayhem: all your usual-rock-suspects - bass, guitar, drums and also strings, horns, sax, synths, electronic beats and other percussion, backing singers, yada yada, and it is all tied up by Turley's thin but multi-tracked and really rather sweet voice. Sweetness is a great quality of this band, when they bother to care about it, which isn't often. Their approach to dissonance is best described as 'militant' (the no-wave thing again). A band like Sonic Youth uses dissonance as a valuable tool that plays off their concessions to traditional harmony and, at their best, that dialectic is fricking amazing. Swahili Blonde do the same but somtimes it seems the music is nearly derailed, the train of their songs plunging into a fearsome sonic jungle from which no survivors emerge. I say seems, augh, honestly you could probably learn to enjoy ramming a swizzle stick in your ear till the blood flows freely (the sound has this unexpected warm quality?), but after multiple listens this is beginning to make more and more sense to my brain. Like some crazy vision that needed serious meditation. Still (look at me going back and forth like a reviewer chasing his tail), the most accessible and still the most enjoyable track is a cover of A-ha's rather creepy but nonetheless deliciously poppy Scoundrel Days. Potentially there's a lesson there for Turley and co. Still, the post-punk drive with extra added unease of their halucinogenic single Purple Ink isn't far behind in the catchy stakes (and it has an out-there video too). Yeah, look, you've gotta be a little awed as these crazy folk power by with their afrobeat engine-room firing wildly, John Fruiscante plinking away, insensible to the teetering mutant-pop monstrosity about to collapse on him. A giant mound of music with string & horn sections hanging on for dear life and Ms. Turley standing atop singing merrily. As it passes into the distance, you realise something like this doesn't come by every day.

- Chris Cobcroft.