So what were you expecting Ikara Colt to turn out like two albums in? Of course this is pretty much an innovation free zone. Of course there are precious few actual surprises. Of course they’ve not really changed, not one little bit. Naturally this is still exactly the place to come for blunt damaging guitars, achingly distracted vocals and beats that will make a forceful entry through your ear-canals without negotiation and pulp your throbbing brain into a gasping mush without a second thought. This is not the best place to come for a dose of subtlety. The thing with Ikara Colt Mk II is they’ve become ever so au-fait with “more”.
More loudness. More shouting. More of those anthemic hooks. More reckless plagiarism, cherry-knocking their way through the Fall back-catalogue. More ownership of what they’ve collected. More of the old essentially, only with a helping more of the more. More more more. The dimensions really have grown, this is a much bigger album than ‘Chat & Business’. There are twins for ‘One Note’ (‘Wake In The City’), ‘Sink Venice’ (‘Wanna Be That Way’), ‘City Of Glass’ (‘Waste Ground’) and ‘Here We Go Again’ (‘How’s The World Gonna Take You Now?’), but almost without exception they’ve been tweaked and beefed and pounded into something so much more.
The propulsion and the amazingly precise drumming of ‘Waste Ground’ for instance, even with its mid-tempo, plainly introduces a leaner, keener ‘Colt. ‘I’m With Stupid’, at the other end of the scale, is an example of all four firing on every cylinder to hand, and one of their very best for that reason alone. There is a touch of a departure on ‘Modern Feeling’ and ‘Motorway’, fuzzy electronics and krautpop rhythms, Claire taking a robotic lead vocal on the latter, but they share energy and fit in nicely, breaking up the otherwise dedicated wrecking.
Paul must now be pretty close to getting the gig as Mark E Smith’s understudy, especially with such recklessly spat lines as “a drunk vicar delivers confusing apocalyptic sermons to the bleeding congregation” preceded by something about a “Tupperware sex party” and that “these are things I have come to expect of you” (‘Repro/Roadshow/Nightmare’). He’s not talking to us, surely? The only thing that’s really untoward about the whole record is the title. Although we’re still a sucker for its red-eyed charms, ‘Chat & Business’ stands out as the apprentice next to this fine figure.