The Underground of Happiness

V.O. are a well-established six-piece from Brussels (although new to me), centred around the elegantly moustached Boris Gronemberger. On their third album they've hooked up with John McEntire of Tortoise on production and the results are stunning. More on the album anon, but for now sample this intoxicating first single. It might make you think of Stereolab a little in the vintage synth lines, maybe Tortoise in some cultured jazz inflections. The glorious male-female harmonies (the latter by Aurelie Muller, ex Soy Un Caballo) around simple keyboard repetitions might even make you think of a folkier Beach Boys, but there's something brilliantly progressive in the restless, shifting bass melody and massively uplifting in those serene brass swells that makes this sound all their own. It also seems to be a protest song, a call to arms which of course is stirring enough in itself, but apart from that, as I said earlier, it's irresistible and bar-raising pop music....

Some more beauties now plucked from the fog of the recent monthly round-up. William D. Drake - Rising of the lights (Onomatopoeia Records) Here's what I know about William D. Drake. He used to be in English band Cardiacs. He's obviously interested in English folk and medieval music - I have a hunch he enjoys silent film soundtracks too. His music is playful and quite surreal, but not at the expense of passion and energy. The instrumental track Ziegler starts like a Buster Keaton chase sequence (with twirling clarinet) before becoming very like the theme tune to (the fondly remembered Irish children's tv programme) Wanderly Wagon . He's a fantastic piano player, who sounds like he'd be right at home with jazz, classical, traditional or any other genre you'd like to throw at him. The song Ornamental hermit concerns the (presumably discontinued, although you never know) practice of wealthy English families keeping a hermit on their grounds. The title of the al...