Album review: The Hickey Underworld – self-titled

The only thing worse than opening up a nice fresh Jiffy to find what appears to be a psy-trance album is discovering, upon playing, that it is a psy-trance album. At least I used to think so until I received The Hickey Underworld’s eponymous album a while back (yup – this review’s horribly late. Sue me, I’ve had issues). Now I realise that, even worse, is discovering a pretty bloody marvellous album inside, making the crime against design that is the sleeve almost unforgivable. Oh, they designed it themselves? Well, that’s alright then. Next time, could I suggest you let a grown-up have a go, perhaps?

Anyway, let’s manfully struggle past the art and listen to the album. Over and over again.

It’s a smashing thing, this album. Taut, rough-edged, brief, intimate guitar-pop/rock; hookier than a room full of New Order bassists, crammed full of riffs, utterly unpretentious and nothing, I repeat, nothing, like you’d imagine from looking at the bloody thing. It wears its influences not so much on its sleeve (ugh! That sleeve!) as waving it like a big banner, but they’re all so pleasingly smooshed together there’s no danger of sneery accusations of plagiarism, scene-sucking or plain laziness.

Everything appears to have been recorded onto a ribbon then played back and recorded again; absolutely no clean sounds to be heard at all (oddly reminiscent of The Strokes’ early efforts, particularly “Mystery Bruise” which really belongs on Is This It) but with nothing left to bleed into anything else. I am constantly impressed by what a great sound The Hickey Underworld have achieved by affecting to not give much of a shit at all about it. Actually, there’s one exception to this rule: the single released earlier this year “Future Words” which, while being a little cracker itself, somewhat sticks out a bit due to its different treatment.

Anyway, I’m pretty much done kissing this album’s arse. I’m not going to chase you down the street claiming it doesn’t so much shift paradigms as reinvent music all over again; I’m not even going to tell you it’s something you’ve not heard before; I’m sure you will have, somewhere. It’s just ten great songs, played one after another then released, and it’s the best record I’ve heard from Belgium since T99 invented Hardbeat.