Plump DJs - Headthrash

Andy Gardner and Lee Rous equip themselves with one of those double-edged swords where if they stick to their guns, they’re stagnant, and if they branch out into new areas, they’re not staying true. The fault of fusspot listeners, or a creative spark becoming fidgety over time?
 
Stepping outside of just giving the rafters something to think about, shifts in focus dominate the Plumps’ fourth LP. Given their high-octane peaks, it’s unsurprising that these don’t come delivered with a subtle hand. Room trashing angst one minute, reaching for the skies the next, is a given. Headthrash is quite an up and down listen, but is well named. It provides neck-wrenching moments as well as an ability to leave you disorientated, such is its route from A to B. Fast-paced highs chop and change with greasier, sludgy travails through the other end. Alongside the primers for subwoofer deployment are a host of pop-not-pop moments, melding synths with guitars (grungy crash and burner He Got Beef, the vocoder-heavy Beat Myself Up) and pushing up electro lightweights (the freestyling Theme X, Ultravox-referee Torque of the Devil). Not all of these are successful – adequate album tracks defeated in trying to make pop with a natural (but in the end, contrived-sounding) savagery.
 
When less concerned with trying to find misery some company, the Plumps hit definite high points in the concluder Lost in Space – soul with an extra-terrestrial tinge. The best of the pop/crossover seekers owes its success to better realised fine points and the quality of the Sam Sparro-ish vocal. On the other hand, Shifting Gears retains breaks’ essence by superlatively rerouting the funk factor, going with sampled cop show funk blasts, knotty bass wobbles and Niara’s diva vocals acting like a breaks Bond girl.
 
It can be argued that though these sub-Poison forays knuckle up with a fist-through-a-wall mentality, they’re actually acting as respite from Rous & Gardner’s standard stock of breaks racers. Conversely and almost perversely, some of the big room tunes get by through keeping the revs concentrated. After the Breakspoll-honoured System Addict (one part reach for the skies, one part out-of-my-way roughness) and the acid-washed floor crammer Snake Eyes have uncorked the whoop-ass bottle with big synth striders, the pair home in on particular creations of movement, instead of just leaving it in the hands of whopping great riffs. SNAFU consciously places more emphasis on the drum work, with live stop-start kicks and snares funking up by a horn-synth squall. Alien discoing at its funkiest, and not for the first time on the album, carrying a lightness and accessibility in its bid to rock the big arenas.
 
On Disco Unusual – a bell-heavy drum stomp hijacking the night train - it’s as if the Plumps have deliberately put out a public service announcement that their own dance troupe will be occupying the floor soon, putting the synths more on the sidelines for a no-nonsense session despite the lack of major hook. Rocket Soul is another demonstration of dancefloor instruction, without blurting it out. With the synths cleaned and loaded for a festival season battle, it’s a straightforward, mates-grabbing jump-up, subtly suggesting end of set-at-daybreak euphoria. Exhilaration remains still the Plumps’ food and drink, so don’t fret if your feet start worrying about the downshifts in BPMs.