- Artist
- Love Of Diagrams
- Label
- Matador
- Release date
- 9th April 2007
- Genre
- Indie
Melbourne trio lacks decent timing and tunes on disappointingly ordinary second album
It’s not easy being a UK post-punk influenced band in 2007. Of late, the indie scene has been saturated with groups taking the spiky guitars, bass rumbles and jerky rhythms of Gang Of Four as their cue. Out of the morass, The Futureheads and Bloc Party have become big stars.
So some sympathy can be felt for the apathy Australian three-piece Love Of Diagrams might well face. Despite honing their pummelling death-disco sound since forming in Melbourne in 2001, a second album tardily arrives on these shores to an audience that has had more than its fill of PiL-indebted combos.
Back in 2004, Mosaic would have been a hyped release full of promise. The band’s mysterious name hints strongly at the album’s collection of songs as acute angles: terse sloganeering Siouxsie Sioux-style vocals from Antonia Sellbach counterpoint prickly, echoing guitars, pounding bass and drums. However, listen beyond an urgent racket that is no doubt impressive live (and recorded at the legendary Steve Albini’s studio in Chicago) and Mosaic is strangely underwhelming, ordinary and far too familiar.
A reluctance to spin undoubtedly credible influences into their own direction and a crushing lack of tunes make Love Of Diagrams sound like a poor man’s Love Is All – a band with similar roots who gleefully twist their post-punk into joyous, melodic and dancey shapes. A debt to Gang Of Four coupled with some po-faced nonchalance is unlikely to be enough to make this Mosaic stand the test of time.
More to try: Gang Of Four: Entertainment! PiL: Metal Box Love Is All: Nine Times That Same Song The Breeders: Pod
