Photo: Chantel Van De Sande
Long-since splashed with the jazz tag, Acoustic Ladyland seemed far travelled from the limitations of that genre at their new album launch. Their fourth LP, Living With A Tiger, embraces a true punk aesthetic including a transformed line-up and apocalyptic noise-noodling set to furious pace. Drummer Seb Rochford was sanguine as ever anchoring melodic diversions from behind a foot-high afro on the the kit, while Pete Wareham performed as the parody of the jazz saxophonist, spine-arched and brow-furrowed, a Howard Moon made flesh. New additions to the band, guitarist Chris Sharkey and bassist Ruth Goller, accompany with electric guitar-gurn and shifty head-nodding respectively. They lack the palapable confidence of their longer-serving colleagues, but nothing in the sound they produce, which ranges from roaring atonal solos to speed-funk.
Another stylistic shift: Acoustic Ladyland do away with vocals on Living With A Tiger, letting their instruments do the talking. Less subtle than ever before, new tracks hang often from a singular sax hook, repeated and warped over the splutter of Rochford’s inimitable drumming. Their most impressive feat is their sustained pace as they move seamlessly through the transgression of songs that, to the untrained ear, sound moments from a complete collapse in co-ordination. Rochford’s role in this is never-more-central and band-members communicate constantly via eye-contact throughout in stringing sections together.
Standout tracks included ‘Have Another Go’, in which the biting sax-riff is succeeded by an electric guitar solo, Sharkey doctoring his sound to create leftfield atonal squalling hanging loosely from the bones of the original riff. A weird, hybrid lounge-punk, its flattened and hurrying razor guitars are softened by Wareham’s faultless, caramel tone up front. Meanwhile ‘The Mighty Q’ manages maniacal atmosphere. As Wareham’s tribute to his new-born son, it’s a brooding, downtempo number that offers brief respite in velocity without moment’s loss of intensity.
True to album-launch form, the fourpiece offer little by way of their backcatalogue, saving ‘Iggy’ of 2005’s ‘Last Chance Disco’ for nearer the end of the set, its rapturous reception proof of some of the better-acquainted fans in the audience. While it's unlikely Acoustic Ladyland will ever stray too far into the mainstream, Living With A Tiger smashes the chain-ball of that jazz-tag with a baseball bat of rock and funk, cementing the punk aesthetic that has long characterised them better than any other.
