Alt-J - Relaxer

Rating:

Alt-J don’t play by the rules - the rules bend around them.

Alt-J aren’t your average big band. They’ve got all the trappings - headlining major arenas and topping the bills at major festivals. When they drop new music, the internet reacts accordingly. Radio stations add it to their playlists. Words are written. People listen.

But at the heart of it all sits a band who don’t conform to the expected norms. Not musically, at any rate. Nobody else sounds like Alt-J. Few others are as daring, either. Perhaps Radiohead, with their blank cheque of being able to record whatever they desire and still receive automatic acclaim, could be said to push the boundaries of mainstream acceptance in a similar fashion, but it’s easy when you know there’s little on the line.

Standing on their own, Alt-J don’t play by the rules - the rules bend around them. The most immediate moment of ‘Relaxer’ might feature a string of binary as its ear-worm refrain, but there’s little digital about their third album. While those peers churn out carefully crafted robotic bangers, coated in the sheen of ones and zeroes, Alt-J’s music feels like a living, breathing, growing organism - it’s intertwining vines creaking as they wrap themselves around a world lit by the cold blue glow of a billion tiny screens.

Far from a carefully levelled out affair, ‘Relaxer’ drifts and skips around its family tree, drawing inspiration from wherever it feels fit. ‘In Cold Blood’, all powerful chants and forceful stabs, is definitely the battering ram that will placate the machine’s desire for something immediate, but it’s far from a comprehensive preview of what’s to be found elsewhere.