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Album Review: Art Brut, "It's a Bit Complicated" (Mute)
After scorching the indie scene with a slice of totally pure pleasure in 2005--if you didn't feel like forming a band or at least chuckling about it after that first hear of "Formed a Band," you clearly weren't listening closely enough--Art Brut returns with "Its a Bit Complicated," which finds the group in the difficult spot of trying to replicate a success that came completely out of left field. They almost succeed.
If "Complicated" is undeniably a slicker affair than Art Brut's debut album, "Bang Bang Rock and Roll," the former is also unflinchingly of a piece with the latter; the songs here are less about naive-but-enthusiastic outbursts ("I've seen her naked ... TWICE!") than about coping with playing it cool after you've already had a little bit of what you wanted.
Sonically, the band sounds better than ever, and chances are good that frontman Eddie Argos might finally get to appear on Top of the Pops, just like he's always dreamed. But the excitable, simple insight that peppered "Bang Bang" is almost nowhere to be found here, replaced instead by a shimmering, Euro-rocking, guitar-band sound. The songs are danceable, but the moves are straight off the shelf, and Argos seems oddly repressed on most of the album's tracks, like he's holding something back. It's almost like he's being polite.
The disc has fewer peaks and more valleys than the band's debut, but highlights include "Jealous Guy," the radio-friendly first single "Debut Hit" and the album's terrific opener, the swaggering "Pump Up the Volume."
It's a pleasant record despite its flaws, because Argos and his band are too smart and funny to tilt completely into the cutout bin, and also because they actually do seem to know what they're doing, even when they're not doing it very well. And if that seems like weak praise, consider the alternative: Art Brut could be dealing out indie-o-matic hooks-by-rote ala the likes of The Killers or The Strokes, but all throughout "It's a Bit Complicated," the listener senses a band trying to bust a move, but just failing to do so. Work is happening here, but it's ultimately unsatisfying work, for the band as well as the listener.
But they're young, and Argos has already shaved his moustache off. And they'll rise again. Art Brut hasn't really avoided the sophomore slump with this one, but one gets the sense that the band will learn its lessons and come out swinging next time 'round.
