The Outline have a way of surprising you; every time you think you have their sound and style pinned down, they pull the rug out from under your feet. You Smash It, We’ll Build Around It is variously punk and pretentious, heavy and delicate, clever and dumb.
The moody spacious guitar and electronic percussion of “Aesthetics” opens the album on an epic note, the sound of late night streetlights reflecting on car windscreens as you drive through the modern metropolis, but then The Outline go all quirk-prog-pop with “Life or Life-like”, a song that sounds like Brandon Flowers channelling early Supergrass by way of Balearic acid house. You Smash It, We’ll Build Around It is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates – you really don’t know quite what you’re going to get.
But you know it’s going to be clever, even (or possibly most often) when The Outline are masquerading as something dumber than they really are. There’s more to the package than indie-rock pomp or new-wave retro, because they’re writing songs that go further than a reappropriation of a style or sound.
For my money, The Outline are at their best when doing their noisy jagged-rapid stuff. The big-slow indie-rock efforts like “Why We’re Better Right Now” leave me a little cold, not because they’re done badly, but because they’ve been done before – many times. We’ve trodden this ground before, and it goes against the ethos suggested by You Smash It, We’ll Build Around It’s title. This is not the New Thing.
The smart/stupid dichotomy isn’t strictly new either, but The Outline do have a knack for it. “Death To Our Enemies (We’ll Make ‘Em Sorry)” starts with cheesy sci-fi wibbling on the synths, but redeems itself by developing into a We Are Scientists-esque arse-shaking groove, the sort of thing that packs dancefloors at wide-demographic alternative clubs. Meanwhile “Shotgun” comes across like a Mudhoney spoof, with gravelly vocals and garage-rawk chords – and as much as it seems like pastiche, the energy is very convincing. Perhaps You Smash It, We’ll Build Around It is the sound of a band not taking themselves too seriously … well, with the exception of “In Light Of Recent News”, that is.
See what I mean? Listening to The Outline is like going out with an awesome girl with a drinking problem. I just can’t make my mind up – there are moments on You Smash It, We’ll Build Around It when I’m actively frustrated by what seems to be tawdry copyism of the most unremarkable type, but then (usually in the next song along) they’ll do something that makes me love them again.
But credit where it’s due, You Smash It, We’ll Build Around It is ambitious and idiosyncratic in a good way. It’s not necessary for me to like all of it to be able to say that they’re an interesting band, though I do find myself yearning for a little more consistency of inventiveness – if you know you can do the really good stuff, why bother with the fillers and also-rans?
But maybe consistency would lessen the impact of the really good bits? Oh, I don’t know. All I know is that after You Smash It, We’ll Build Around It closes with the surreal quasi-theatre sketch of “Broadway And Hurst”, I want to hang out with The Outline for a while – no matter how many times a night they annoy me or embarrass me in public.
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Tags: art-rock, experimental, indie, post-hardcore, The Outline, You Smash It We'll Build Around It
