Cuneiform Records
Mark Holub (d), Liran Donin (b), Toby McLaren (Fender Rhodes), Pete Grogan (s) and Chris Williams (s). Rec. 2010

Seven years, five albums and one Mercury Prize nomination into their career, Led Bib show no sign of mellowing out. This latest finds them trimming the fat from their high-energy brand of jazz-rock, and turning out their leanest, most rocking effort to date. That means fewer solos, fewer free-form interludes and more honest-to-goodness, heads-down power-skronk with foot-to-the-floor forward motion. Mark Holub’s drums are more approachable than ever – sounding less like the oft-compared Robert Wyatt and more like a scowling Buddy Miles.

Toby McLaren’s Fender Rhodes spews up nut-job spasms and shudders like a Mad Professor with substance-abuse issues. Pete Grogan and Chris Williams largely share the spotlight, generating glistening cat’s-cradles. And Liran Donin’s bass has a slippery heft, like an alarmingly muscular conger eel trained in advanced harmolodics. Yet, despite the incendiary madness of the playing, there’s a wry method in Holub’s compositions. A familiar, anthemic quality can be detected in tracks like ‘Is That A Woodblock’ and there’s a kind of grotesque humour in set-pieces like ‘Power Walking,’ with its lumbering, angry riff perfectly summoning the image of a moody corridor stomp. Let’s face it, something this much fun is never going to win the Mercury, is it?

Daniel Spicer