| Based out of Glasgow, although largely not originally from there, Dancer is the latest endeavour from some familiar musical faces who perform in the likes of Robert Sotelo, Order Of The Toad and Nightshift. The band descended on Green Door studio last Winter and recorded the tracks that would become their self-titled debut mini-album, released via GoldMold in February this year.
Listening to Dancer, they are a band that arrives with evident joy, the sound of a collection of musicians who have been playing long enough to know that the best music is made when you’re having fun, the rhythm section bounds, the vocals are swimming in sass, and the wiry stop-start guitars are just the right side of chaotic. Take Ferret Fancier, possibly the most anarchic song about Mustelidae you’ll ever hear, it pairs a wall of clattering guitars with a bass-link funky enough for Delta 5 and Kathleen Hanna-like vocal yelp. Elsewhere Arch Nemesis, freshly shared with an excellent accompanying video, struts around in the middle ground of Television and Dry Cleaning, while The Split pairs the call-and-response qualities of Sacred Paws with the sing-speak vocals of Life Without Buildings. Perhaps the oddest, and in its own way most political moment on the record comes with Chris Whitty’s Inner World, an anxious slice of 80’s leaning post-punk, that takes the Chief Medical Officer into an anxiety spiral, pleading for logic and statistics to hold the world together as it tries to burst apart, “I pray for knowledge, statistics, for logic to win through”. Ultimately Dancer is a record that is both pleasingly familiar if you know its creators’ work, and yet has enough about it to stand alone, a beacon of creativity from a band of musical siblings having the time of their lives.
Dancer is Gemma Fleet (Voice/Words), Chris Taylor (Guitar/Keytar), Andrew Doig (Bass) and Gavin Murdoch (Drums). They also play in other bands such as Nightshift (Trouble in Mind), Order of the Toad (Gringo Records) and Robert Sotelo (Upset the Rhythm). |