Review by Steve MarckHooded Fang’s Album may have been recorded in a run-of-the-mill studio, but on its first listen, that information becomes dubitable. It’s much more likely that these songs were strung together with brightly coloured yarn woven by the band dawning hand-drawn monster masks atop a treehouse in a bioluminescent marsh. Everything about Album is bright, beaming and optimistically imaginative, but it never reaches that headache-inducing threshold commonly associated with such upbeat melodies. The songs are stitched with nonchalant, daydreamy vocals that drift between the tightly wound rhythms of a high-strung drummer that never struggles. Every instrument provides ample hum-along opportunities hours after the music is finished. Hooded Fang orchestrates the soundtrack for a neon-tinted dream with subtlety, which is hard to believe until you pick out the keyboards from Laughing and Sleep Song; the shakers from Straight up the Dial, or the synth bass from Too Late Night. The songs would still stand on more than one leg worth running with, and still be infectiously smile-inducing, but it’s the fine detail to such simplicity that makes Album worth replaying again and again.
