Album Review: Oral Habit - 'A Broken Chord'
‘A Broken Chord’ pushes Oral Habit to their sonic limits that show the world what the psych/punk/Kraut band is capable of – have we found the next Osees?
“If a button’s there, it’s there to be pushed,” says Charlie Hales, frontman of Oral Habit, working with his brother Felix on drums and the bass of Tippi Lewis to deliver a monstrous of a debut LP that sees the band pushing themselves to the limit and throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.
It feels like it dips into 60s freakbeat territory at times – the Brighton band able to add to another eclectic mix of the city’s seemingly endless outpouring of brilliant bands that one week in the city for the Great Escape in May will tell you just how many there are. The tracks start sharp and snappy – ‘Surface Breaker’ is the track opener after the intro, and we get a machine gun snare of hits that break through the surf riff. There are echoes of Osees and the psych groove that exists beneath the surface of Oral Habit, with the 30 minutes LP capturing a kind of self-described “rainbow” of what the band is capable of – it’s got everything there under the sun which is kind of exactly what you want from a debut album.
“Dear listener”, writes the piece attatched to the intro to ‘A Broken Chord’, “a broken chord can represent that what makes thee chord a chord”. It’s a statement that sets the ball rolling and the lyrics of ‘Surface Breaker’ air triumphant: “once more we’ll fall in time / you’re small but you’re standing tall and drinking wine”, the single launches into gear. It’s hypnotic, dizzy, alluring – sprawling and pure psych goodness. Just as you’re getting used to it swerves into a different direction and a different path that you weren’t really expecting it to, you can never pin down Oral Habit and even after giving the full album multiple playthroughs, you’re still able to find many new things there.
The heavy fuzzy feeling that pulls you in keeps you there. If anything, the first few tracks are kind of mission statements to what Oral Habit are going to be like as a band going forward with the entrancing ‘Faux Fidelity’ laying their approach bare for anyone left listening to the record who hasn’t quite got it yet. “I do not adhere to the constant boring / rolling the dice and the earth keep turning” suggests that Oral Habit, whatever they do are never going to allow themselves to be boxed in and that remains apparent going forward by the more time you spend with their sound. It’s wickedly inventive and has that maverick, fearless approach of a debut LP that reads like a massive confidence booster and captures the band’s signature sound incredibly well.
It’s not just maverick for the sake of maverick, it’s maverick with a purpose – renewed and confident, a touch of acid-punk depth to it ready to go off at any moment – the record itself feels like a call and response: the first half is laying the stage for the identity of Oral Habit, and the second half is them lighting the match and chucking it into a room that is already at boiling point waiting to explode before taking a breath and letting what they’ve accomplished truly sink in, taking some radical leftfield turns in the process that leave you feeling completely surprised by the time all is said and done – it just never truly stays still at any given turn.
By the time we get to the surf-rock anthem of ‘Thin Trippin’, you’re fully hypnotised and cast under the spell as what Hales calls it, “a trip so strong the song hypnotised itself. [It’s] a sleazy groove that rolls on over until it abruptly comes undone, pulling you in and spitting you out.” and this is the short, sharp bursts of Oral Habit that capture that feeling of early Osees – the guitar even calls to mind Jack White post The White Stripes especially deeper into the album, and when it’s really allowed to let loose. When King Gizzard are in psych mode like ‘Float Along – Fill Your Lungs’ as opposed to their heavier tracks like ‘Petrodragonic’, ‘A Broken Chord’ feels like a spiritual successor in places, never unafraid to offer up a brand-new sound whilst also showing where the band’s legacy lies. But the noise rock influences keep it grounded in the scene that it operates in – and there’s even elements of punk at times just when you think you’re beginning to pin down Oral Habit as a band - give me the industrial heavy sound of Gurriers, especially on the second half of ‘Mystery Gash’ or on ‘Do the Dog’, sure to generate plenty of tonal shift.
There are quieter songs like ‘Motorway’ deployed towards the back end that allow Oral Habit to come up for air but it doesn’t stay that long – it almost drifts into 2007s-esque indie, showing their strength in depth and range at times. Throughout the sweat-drenched riffs that are sure to ignite the right crowd into a pit ‘A Broken Chord’ holds your hand and guides you through the dance that is impossible to be drawn away from.
“Another day walks by // how profound,” ‘Crooner & Moon’ brings the album to a close in style taking them back to their early days as a bedroom outfit, showing how it’s best to simply just move on. “You let the pricks all down underground // Then lay the bricks on down”; is a sense of triumph – the album on a high note that will surely find a growing appeal with all the tastemaker festivals already under their belt and thriving. You’re watching a band grow more confident with every release as they make the step up from grimier venues to buildings with proper sound systems, and it feels like they’re learning from their live sets and it’s reflective in their debut record.
Words by Miles Milton-Jefferies
