No mention of bacon, lego, pastry or vikings: reviewer misses opportunities with Danes' disappointing/entrancing second album

Anyone else feeling bewildered, lost, disconnected? We’ve all just about navigated our way through the did-anyone-actually-call-it-that? Noughties, the decade that broke into every other decade, nicked all the good stuff, then rushed home and gave it a whack and a twist that ensured it never quite worked properly. We’ve escaped, heavily sedated, from a year in which- for a couple of weeks- The Man’s anaesthetic hegemony was comically dented by a bunch of ‘90s shouty Yank lefties and a web of post-adolescent malcontents. Snow bloody Patrol’s Chasing Cars was the most-played song, Lady GaGa was second-bestselling artist, Guy Ritchie made a decent film, Ryan Giggs was Sports Personality Of the Year and Weller and Foxton were back in the studio together. We’re at the start of 365 days that that nice David Cameron tells us is a Year of Hope and what happens? This turns up: the second album by a bunch of irritatingly-named Danes, trailed by a charmingly creepy video for the track Swim and PR words/threats such as ‘art-pop’, ‘trippy’, ‘Syd’, ‘Barrett’, churches’, Aqua', ‘forests’, ‘cyber-funk’ and- most frightening of all- ‘Supertramp’. Oh dear.

We need to be brave, though, strong, stay grounded. Which is easier said than done: first listen through, and- undoubtedly as part of an Apple plot against Twisted Ear- playing Eggs ('Eggs'!) in iTunes means each of the first few tracks is followed by a random one of the software’s own choosing. Floaty, sweet, Beatlesy Eleanor Speaks is juxtaposed, therefore, with Charles Mingus’ Slop, the aforementioned Swim’s edgier saccharin-spite needling with Gladys Knight’s Daddy Could Swear, I Declare and the soft-pop-buzz of Internet Warrior with Cedric Watson’s Zydeco Du Violon. An unexpected way to begin a voyage through the considered and calculated off-kilter naughty-nastiness of Eggs, but, ultimately, an enlightening one. This album is so astonishingly European, more specifically Northern European, in its sea-wrapped, folkloric, harmonic, wooded, Gothic-alien, grey-and-white, chilly and layered treble-not-bassness, owes so little to the US or Africa,  is so determinedly in thrall to northern traditions and soundscapes. It sounds like Yes at times (bad), early Floyd at others (good). The American- the urban- influence, when it intrudes, is that of Euroyanks- Animal Collective/Grizzly Bear’s proggy psych-lite folk. Icicles and new single Helplessly Young are- yes- Supertrampy, all nice, neat melody and squeaky, treated voices: resolutely unchallenging, clever, so-whatish. There’ll be more cyber-funk on Dolly Parton’s next album than there is here.

But. But: the start of Wave Ballet’s choral, organic beauty abruptly raises this album up to the heavens: beautiful, elegiac and, while it descends briefly into Barclay James Harvestry, cheap dope and the ghosts of Roger Dean covers floating around like half-stoned gate-crashers, a half-minute burst of painfully exquisite guitar-gorgeousness rescues the song/the album/you/me/the world.  Everything becomes absolutely of its time- now, us, here. Insistent, enveloping and surprising, this caressing, grinning, seductive spark of transcendence straddles genres and the fence between cold aloofness and warm emotion joyfully, romantically and alluringly.

Quickly down again we go, sliding into the awkwardly playful whimsy of twisted-childlike The Tea Party, its howls of wolves and cold death barely discernible, frustrating in their promise of more. Yet further down, the following Miss Miss Moss is- and it's really hard to overstate this- fucking annoying, as is the at-least-vaguely-interesting Eve. The 9’47” of Beelitz and the end of the album startle, then: winking and luring and engulfing with a lush, beguiling beauty, there’s an elemental quietness here, a questing wander across sound and sense that follows its own idiosyncratic but determined path, back through history to all our rural, fearful pasts. As with much of the album, though, just as those precious minutes of a bewitching urge to connect burst through, enchanting and enriching, they're undercut, wearyingly, by silly, embarrassing studio-games. And we're left with a question: are this lot a bunch of 70’s-thralled self-indulgent jokey hippie show-offs or are they ground-breaking, heart-breaking contemporaries with something to say to each one of us about our lives and our futures? On the evidence of Eggs, ONO are both and, as such, they’ll be critically feted and- possibly- shift a fair number of albums.  But where they go next  . . .

Release date: 01/02/10
Artist website: http://ohnoono.com
Label: Leaf

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