When the press release starts with “…where to start when describing Laurel Collective?” you’re usually in trouble. The Internet’s full of folk making cack-handed cracks at describing all sorts of music, so it can’t be that hard. Either the band really are an elephantine blob of indescribable genre straddling, or PR people can’t be arsed.
It’s a bit of both with the band in question. They have anything from six to nineteen members, with two vocalists, tribal drumming and an on-off lust for Morrissey, then Outkast, then Hendrix, flighty explosions of glittery choruses, occasionally only tethered down and kept away from the dreaded ‘twee’ by proper pounding drums and samples, lyrics like “I wasn’t gutted, I was disembowelled”... the PR company maybe have a point. In amongst the motion-sickness, though, there are beautiful, fully formed songs, and probably one beast of a live show. Hopefully many more hacks can have a better attempt at describing this wonderful mess before too long. Pick: Gun Mouth.
8/10
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