petals on a wet black bough

Turn The Car Around

"Turn the Car Around" is just a brilliant four and a half minute pop song that takes an impressive line in inventive self-production and an effortless and incredibly catchy songwriting style. Fans of Radiohead will find much to draw them into the title track, with references to both the opening of Paranoid Android and the drum machine/guitar interplay of 'In Rainbows' immense opener '15 step', while the lyrics suggest an admiration for the melancholic wanderings of Elliott Smith. It's the same inventive yet focused production style that makes David Sitek's work for TV On The Radio, or indeed Nigel Godrich's handling of Radiohead, so peculiar; the song opaque enough to only hint at the complexity and depth waiting to be unearthed without ever compromising the fact that what you're listening to is ultimately catchy, classic pop music. "In your Sleep" on the flipside is a worthy companion piece, a rich, almost luxurious recording style permeating the introspective chord progressions drenched in reverb and layered guitar treatments haunted by arcing string bends and spectral blues of Loren Connors-like proportions. A great, incredibly promising debut and utterly essential.