Little Barrie & Malcolm Catto – ‘Electric War’ album review: impressionistic jams which only travel so far
THE SKINNY: Boasting an eclectic CV across collaborations with Primal Scream, The The, and Dan the Automator, guitarist Barrie Cadogan has won a reputation for his expressive style of playing that channels his eclectic creative scope. Teaming up with bassist Lewis Wharton under the Little Barrie moniker, for the past 20 years, the former trio—featuring drummer Virgil Howe until his passing in 2017—has been stirring a smoky pot of laconic hip-hop, dusky psych, and a dash of bluesy rock held together with an attempt at transportive aura. Teaming up with drummer and producer Malcolm Catto following their debut collaboration Quatermass Seven, the trio once again immerse themselves in their signature sunsetting surrealism for new record Electric War.
Electric War is an album for anybody who enjoys the urgent crackle of a record that engulfs with a sense of intimacy, the band playing right there in front of you when you close your eyes and allow their sun-kissed jams to wash over. Cadogan, Wharton and Catto are expert players with a magic frisson of intuition charged between them as you’d expect from an LP that very actively is seeking to eschew the post-production bullshit and just revel in the captured spark of three guys playing in a room.
You have to try hard though. It’s clear the trio are reaching for meditative elevation in acid rock’s best tradition but the cusp of whisked-away exploration is frustratingly leaden by a sense of swirling around in a circle. No major progression or sonic traverse, and a lot of stewing in a shallow garage pool where parameters become all too clear all too quickly. Just when a groove or hypnotic bass line starts to massage your frontal lobe, an upending pang of looped, falafel kitchen soundtrack starts to veer perilously close.
There are enough disparate hues and flavours to pull Electric War from the brink of retro-vintage superficiality, however. Exotic strings and gurgling keys ebb and bob with tantalising allure, but their secret weapon is Catto’s fluid and amorphous drumming technique, forever shifting between rolling adrenaline and listless shuffle with masterful dexterity.
Little Barrie & Malcolm Catto have gone some distance in striving for a midnight movie energy that dances and lurks over Electric War, but with their impressionistic psych-rock noodling only ascending so far, the evocative hinterlands they’re grabbing for always feel just out of reach.
For fans of: Vintage film poster canvases.
A concluding comment from Khaos and Harmonia: “Close but way off”.
Electric War track by track:
Release: April 18th | Producer: Malcolm Catto | Label: Easy Eye Sound
‘Electric War’: All the ingredients are there, but the opening title track just never quite arrives anywhere. Like a drag ‘n’ drop Joshua Tree template for a cheap exploitation thriller, which sounds better on paper. [3/5]
‘Zero Sun’: An authentic swirl into Krautrock progressions. A thick, turgid synth smatters the cut with a lysergic charge. [3.5/5]
‘Spektator’: Menace bares its teeth on this one. A fraught danger that clashes with an ambiguous skulk, the trio harnesses something special with ‘Spektator’. [4/5]
‘Creaky’: A flat, one-dimensional traipse through generic desert rock. Surely a B-side? [2.5/5]
”Said Soul’: Lovely harmonies and textures guitar percolations. Rippling and multi-coloured with splashy ease. [4/5]
‘Sick 8’: A nice stirring break partway, but offering little else. Cadogan’s fizzing guitar solo is the saving grace. [3/5]
‘My Now’: Choppy strut with a denser heft than we’ve heard yet. Does the job. [3/5]
‘Count of Four’: Just as your attention starts to wane, in comes a freaky jump into effects-soaked grooves and a sincerely stirring vignette of B-movie drama. A welcome thunderstorm of a closer. [3.5/5]
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