The Phantom Band, Checkmate Savage
Featured Album
Five Glasgow lads raid the Stereolab armed with Scottish folk and synthesizers
In "The Whole Is On My Side," the final song on Glasgow fivesome the Phantom Band's debut album, frontman "Richard the Turd" Princeton (credited on the band's website with "harmonies and libraries") howls lackadaisically about "jumping up and down, rolling on the ground, dancing on the edge." And while the Phantoms 'self-proclaimed "proto-robofolk" music doesn't really jump or dance a whole lot, it does have a real good roll to it. Others have likened the pulsating underlying drone to Stereolab, but it might owe just as much to traditional Scottish folk — say, of the Dick Gaughan variety. And though the closest overall sonic precedent for the band's drowsy foreboding might be '80s Birthday Party spin-off Crime and the City Solution, when Princeton's elongated vowels get broguey — like, when he refers in "Folk Song Oblivion" to voices "so loud you break the mountainside" — you're liable to flash on an old hit by Big Country instead.
The poetry about skeletons and silhouettes can feel too subdued to conjure up the dread it seems to be aiming for, and the music sure takes its time getting where it's going. But burbling synthesizers carry the songs forward regardless, and when space clears, evocative incidentals — witches riding the wind, frogs on the pond, blues guitars shadowing headless horsemen through the darkened bog — are allowed to emerge. If their hyped homeboys Glasvegas have left you shrugging, the Phantom Band just might restore your faith.
