Electrelane
No Shouts, No Calls
Release Date: May 8, 2007
Genre(s): Indie, Rock
Record label: Too Pure
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Album Review: No Shouts, No Calls by Electrelane
Fairly Good, Based on 2 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
Beginning with their breakthrough second effort, The Power Out, it feels like Electrelane has had a specific focus for each album. The Power Out itself added vocals to their sound, Axes concentrated on experiments in tension and release, and No Shouts No Calls delivers a set of urgent, romantic epics. This may not be their most dramatic album -- the women of Electrelane don't get around to their lock-groove rock until the seventh track, "Between the Wolf and the Dog" -- but its best songs are among the band's finest work.
Based on rating 2/5
Electrelane's first album was a mostly instrumental affair, and after a cursory listen to Verity Susman's discordant vocals on No Shouts No Calls - the Brighton four-piece's fourth album - you can understand why. On opening track, The Greater Times, her off-kilter singing jars harshly against the rest of her band's sparkling chamber rock, but she somehow seems to warm up to the task throughout the rest of Berlin-written, Michigan-recorded material. Tram 21's layered wordless vocals sit well along the spiralling 1960s synths and similar stacked harmonising does At Sea's ineffably pretty, breezy post-rock equal justice.