Alt-J Album Review

This week, Alt-J’s debut album, “An Awesome Wave”, won the Barclaycard Mercury Prize and has since featured on the cover of NME this week. Personally, I’d missed the album and a combination of the two factors above made me think I must listen to this album! Thank goodness that I did, this album really does deserve the recognition it has received. This year, so many fantastic albums have been released by fantastic bands and artists but this album is definitely one of the most original and well and truly on of the best.

Alt-J are a band from Leeds who met at University. They formed in 2007 and for the early days didn’t reveal their identities to their fan base. The name “Alt-J” comes from the Mac shortcut for the Delta symbol (Δ) and their early recordings were developed on the Mac programme, Garageband until 2011 when the signed for Infectious Records. The album was recorded in Brixton even though they currently take residence in Cambridge.

Onto the album then! For me, the album is so affective because it is so fresh and new but I could still associate it with other bands and pick out possible influences for the album. The only way I can easily describe “An Awesome Wave” is that for me it seems like a mix between Dry the River’s “Shallow Bed” Kasabian’s debut album “Kasabian”. The reason I say this is because there are incredibly intricate synth parts like Kasabian in tracks like “Ovary Stripe” but also combine it with beautiful guitar parts and haunting vocals like Dry the River. The album as a whole, unlike a lot of Indie I’ve come across, has a chirpy feel to it meaning they aren’t being moody long haired young men who are pissed off about their endless encounters with heartbreak.

"An Awesome Wave" album artwork.

They are adventurous with their music which refers back to what I said about the album being “fresh and new”. The second track “Interlude I” is completely acapella and is very basic (in the sense that a higher instrument does a main melody and a lower instrument does the harmony, the song reminds me of a piano in a way because the higher voice, the right hand, sings the more intricate melody line where as the lower voice, the left hand, does the longer and more drawn out notes) and reminds me of traditional African music. In “Taro”, there is a flicker of Indian influences in the music with the use of Tabla, Sitar, Indian style vocals and Bansuri which when mixed with Western instruments, gives a really nice feel to the piece.

I love songs that have many different melodies and the album is so polyphonic and thick, you could chew it. Every time I listen to the album, I discover something new; it’s wonderful because it’s so busy and you get the sense the whole thing is alive.

Behind all of the songs, apart from the acapella one, is a brilliant beat. Unlike a lot of bands in their genre, the beats on this are almost hip-hoppy and again adds to that list of things that make the album so new and different form the rest of them. I love this album because it’s so geeky; I get the idea of the band sitting in a dark room tapping different things into their Macs until it sounds good (which relates to me because that’s basically what I do with my weekends, only I don’t have the privilege of owning a Mac).

Going back to the feel of the album briefly, overall, the album has a nice chilled feel about it. When I listen to the album, I feel myself feeling relaxed and it’s very tempting not to get lost in the layers of music.  

If I had to give a negative, I have to say the clarity of the vocals isn’t 100% my cup of tea. Being a vocalist myself, I do prefer clear vocals. I wouldn’t say it was anywhere near enough put a downer on the album, in fact the more I think about it, the more I think it is a good thing because traditionally, vocals will always be the most important than the rest of the instrument but it seems to me, Alt-J have tried to bring the vocals down to the same level as the rest of the instruments so they’re all as one instead of vocals with accompaniment.

This really is a very good album and if you’re hesitating to buy it, hesitate no longer. It’s fresh, fun so amazing. You will be captured in every single song and I promise, it will soon become a regular replay album on your IPod/IPhone/MP3 player etc. BUY!

9/10