By Jim Rowland
With the original incarnation of the band having imploded fairly quickly after their self-titled debut album in 2019, Anglo-American post-punk merchants The Imbeciles spent lockdown 2020 putting a new line-up together, re-imagining their music and getting back on track. They’ve just completed a successful ÜK tour supporting Killing Joke on their ‘Honour The Fire’ tour in March, which has done their profile the world of good, and now they release their second album ‘Imbecilica’, a record written with and produced by Killing Joke’s Youth.
‘Imbecilica’ encompasses quite a wide range of flavours, moods and influences, often switching from dark to really quite bright in the blink of an eye. That’s certainly the case with the opening few cuts ‘Tiny Blue people’, ‘It’s Not About You’ and ‘I’m Not The One’, which combine the angular, edgy riffs of the Imbeciles’ post-punk roots, reminiscent of the likes of Wire through to Interpol, with some really quite catchy, bright, and it has to be said, commercial-sounding big choruses. The gentler ‘London Rain’, one of the album’s highlights, has an altogether different flavour, clearly bearing the influence of the Beatles in the same way as it did with the likes of Cheap Trick, Enuff z’Nuff, Oasis or even early Lenny Kravitz. And they may hate me for saying it, but the psychedelic pop/rock of ‘Van Man’ gets me thinking of Mr. Kravitz again too, but it’ a very decent tune indeed.
Elsewhere, ‘The Name Of The Rose’ is another catchy, commercial pop-rocker utilising a nice glam-rock shuffle beat, ‘You’re Gonna Wanna’ and ‘Soldiers & Junkies’ are up tempo, catchy and heavy slices of pop/punk, and ‘Let’s Go!’ is a quality rock belter. A real highlight for me is ‘I Won’t Let You Down’, which once again has a big, commercial sounding chorus, but this time combined with the kind of hypnotic vibe of Krautrock legends Neu! in the verses and crescendo, which is another welcome different flavour added to the pot. The soaring pop/rock of ‘Superstar’ rounds things off in fine style too.
‘Imbecilica’ adds together a lot of different influences and flavours, but they all combine to make a very intelligent, creative and coherent album as a whole, which at times is surprisingly and unashamedly commercial leaning, but it works a treat. Given the right exposure, this album deserves to be big.
- ‘Imbecilica’ is released on Friday (20 May). You can get your copy HERE.
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