After winning the 2012 Mercury Prize for the best album of the year in the UK for their debut An Awesome Wave, Brit indie rockers Alt-J had a hell of a lot to live up to. But when news broke that bassist Gwil Sainsbury had left the band, leaving the remaining three (Unger-Hamilton, Newman, and Green) with the challenge of finishing up the sophomore album that has to follow in their glorious debut’s footsteps, things felt a bit uncertain.
About two minutes into This Is All Yours any seeds of doubt are immediately blown away by the best “Intro” I’ve heard since the xx’s 2009 “Intro,” the first track on their own Mercury Prize winning debut XX. Coincidence? I think not. Foreshadowing? I hope.
Four songs in at “Every Other Freckle” (the third and final single they released this summer) and I’m utterly sold — not to mention dancing and singing. With lyrics like, “Turn you inside out and lick you like a crisp packet” and, “Yes, I’m gonna roll around you like a cat rolls around the chrysanthemums,” the song epitomizes sensuality – a running theme throughout the record. When Newman sings, “Heat shimmer, hips quiver, open smother, lipped lover” in “Bloodflood Part II” it feels like we are sinking into Egyptian cotton sheets rolling around “like a cat beds into a beanbag.”
All the while, Alt-J takes us down an intoxicating journey through the whimsical world of Nara. The “Arrival in Nara” leads us to discover that “love is the warmest colour” in “Nara,” and as we are “Leaving Nara,” we go in 61 seconds of silence. Turns out, Nara is actually a city and prefecture in Japan. The Nara Alt-J takes us to, however, feels more like Narnia. Newman sings in “Nara,” “I’ve found a love to love like no other can, he’s found me, my Aslan,” and continues on this in the closing track “Leaving Nara” with “I’ll bury my hands deep into the mane of my lover.” With the majesty of Aslan on our mind, bees buzz, birds chirp and flutes play, creating layers of hallucinogenic sound, taking us deeper into a labyrinth of vocal and instrumental harmony.
Right before we get too lost in the maze, we are guided back by a map of surprises. It’s these small, yet powerful moments that make this album extraordinary. It’s the tempo change in “The Gospel of John Hurt,” the spliced Conor Oberst vocal on “Warm Foothills,” the surprisingly twangy “Left Hand Free,” and the bonus track cover of Bill Withers “Lovely Day.” It’s even the Miley Cyrus sample of her song “4×4” in “Hunger of the Pines,” taken from the brilliant remix produced by drummer Thom Green. How you make that song brilliant is beyond me – a small miracle to say the least.
If this sophomore album didn’t fill the shoes of An Awesome Wave I don’t know what would. We already knew that triangles were their “favorite shape” from the 2012 hit “Tessellate.” What we didn’t know is that “three points where two lines meet” would carry new meaning with the success of the new Unger-Hamilton, Newman, and Green trio. For This Is All Yours throw up your ∆s — it feels like time for another Mercury Prize, and maybe a Grammy or two.
Review by Wallace Morgan. Find her online @window_tothewal
