(Decca)This fascinating band once seemed almost too eclectic – but now strong melodies and hooks drive an album that feels entirely of the moment
Like the familiar line about making
music purely for yourself – and the addendum that if anyone else likes it, it’s a bonus – claiming to be entirely sui generis has long been an interview cliche. It’s a cliche recycled in the title of Melt Yourself Down’s fourth studio album, but that’s forgivable. For once, the band saying it might have a point.
They’re nominally linked to London’s jazz scene: saxophonist and de facto leader Pete Wareham formerly played with
BBC jazz award winners Acoustic Ladyland; Shabaka Hutchings and Tom Skinner have passed through their ranks en route to the justly acclaimed Sons of Kemet. It’s hard not to feel that the current vibrancy of said scene and the high profile of artists such as Hutchings and Nubya Garcia might account for Melt Yourself Down’s major-label deal: there’s something fairly improbable about a band named after an obscure track by the confrontational no wave saxophonist James Chance sharing a roster with Ronan Keating, Alfie Boe and Michael Ball and amiable Aussie bar band the Teskey Brothers; furthermore, a band whose main concession to commerciality has involved their Mauritian vocalist Kushal Gaya shifting to singing in English, rather than a hybrid of French, Creole and a language of his own creation.