AOTY #17: Alt-J - This Is All Yours

It is impossible to talk about alt-J without talking about An Awesome Wave. Their début album was a rare thing indeed, announcing itself as a Great Record ™ within about thirty seconds. The songs were beautiful but unsettling, thanks largely to Gwil Sainsbury’s growling bass and Joe Newman’s divisive vocals, capable of making Kurt Cobain sound articulate whilst also conveying a stupefying range of emotions – the deep dread of the drowning girl on “Ripe And Ruin”, the bitterness of the rejected lover on “Tessellate”, and his own spite and anger on the opener. Despite a few missteps later on – “Googling every corner”, a sample of ambient noise from a car park - An Awesome Wave lived up to its name, gaining the band massive popularity and near-universal critical acclaim

The “difficult second album” is a cliché, and overlooks that more than one band has produced a hotly-awaited sophomore effort that is now considered their magnum opus, and many artists have only broken out with their second record. In recent years, however, it’s proven pretty reliable for British buzzbands, who are routinely making completely insipid follow ups to highly hyped débuts

This Is All Yours was certainly hyped, initially only available to stream from a custom-built app that only worked far out places that Vernon Dursley would consider a viable hiding spot. If the viral marketing hadn’t got people excited, then the quality of the first album was always going to. Everybody would love to live in a universe that contained two records that sound like An Awesome Wave. Unfortunately, alt-J didn’t reach the highs they did in 2012 on This Is All Yours, but their second record is nonetheless a respectable piece of music, with a much more mellow vibe

There are many call-backs to An Awesome Wave, which, like Oasis referencing The Beatles on every other song, initially serves as a pleasant reminder of that album’s charms but quickly becomes tiring. The record’s other major flaw is the absence of Sainsbury’s bass. Alt-J must hire a replacement before they commence recording on their third album

That’s not to say This Is All Yours is without charms of its own. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been so surprised that the highlight was “the least alt-J song ever”, the Lynyrd Skynyrd-influenced “Left Hand Free”, with trite but infectious guitars that mask a very clever lyric:

Well your left hand's free
And your right's in a grip
With another left hand
Watch his right hand slip
Towards his gun
Oh noNewman’s poor enunciation is used to its full potential. The production often renders lyrics incomprehensible, causing fans to substitute in imaginative lyrics of their own. Sometimes a great line is lost, but usually the effect is positive

The band’s humour is also an unexpected asset. In "Nara", Newman compares a homosexual lover to Aslan, seemingly, at least in part, as a shot at homophobic Evangelical Christians who shove The Last Battle down their children’s throats. You can’t help but think that there have been better pro-LGBT+ songs in the past year or so, but we’ll never have too much art dedicated to smacking down Vladimir Putin

“Every Other Freckle” is much less subtle, stringing together ridiculous euphemisms for sex that John Cooper Clarke would be proud of, reaching a peak with the worst guide to cunnilingus ever. If it were written with tongue wedged firmly in cheek, it’s brilliant

It is completely unreasonable to expect a band to make every album as good as An Awesome Wave, so it’s important to try and judge This Is All Yours on its own merit. Of course it is disappointing relative to the masterpiece that proceeded it, but standing alone it is a record that many will love. Comparisons to Second Coming are unwarranted. With time, this will probably be seen as their Give ‘Em Enough Rope - and we all know what happened next there…

- Vesuvius is a geological formation. He is not subscribed to any learned journals, but he reads a lot of abstracts

Come back tomorrow for album #16 and follow along with the list here!