To call Electrelane experimental is one big bloody understatement. A few seconds shy of an hour, I found Axes to be hard work. Unless you are a fan of 6-9 minute long instrumentals you may encounter the same problem.
The first track One, Two Three, Lots is a gentle melodic tune which features a few lines of choir girl vocals, mingling with track two which funnily enough shares the same back beat. The tunes escalate into a crescendo of pounding piano and grinding guitar.
Two For Joy, the third track features vocals again and they are admittedly rather soft and sweet ending in guitar carnage. The next track starts off quite well – nice bit of piano with electrics kicking in towards the end. Not bad, but for almost six minutes? It’s not really heading anywhere. Eight Steps sounds like some old school dance that your gran might have learned at Ballroom Dance Class. ‘Taxi’!!! The next track sounds like a traffic jam and not much else really. Track seven is a nice short instrumental, quite pleasant with some nice loud guitar.
The remainder of the album is made up of tracks that sound like a jumble of random notes with holes between, one track is almost ten minutes long and is frankly bland. During track nine my mum walked into the room and asked if they were playing on a biscuit tin! The final track Suitcase is actually alright, it’s a bit more up tempo and even has the odd ‘oooh’ thrown in.
Not quite music to get excited about – maybe tolerable as background music if you’re chilling out and can’t be bothered with words. Some will like it, but this one is definitely not for me.