Le Thug
Place Is
(Song, By Toad)
Layers of distorted guitar, a dreamy vocal pushed back in the mix, a minimal drum beat. There's a fashion for this stuff at the moment, even an attempt to label it nu-gaze, but in most cases it only makes you want to go back and listen to original albums by My Bloody Valentine or The Jesus And Mary Chain instead. Not so with Glasgow-based trio Le Thug. Clio Alexandra MacLellan is one of those rare singers whose hauntingly addictive vocals would have seen her bracketed alongside Elizabeth Fraser back in the day; Michael Gilfedder's guitars, especially on the monumental Basketball Land, are thick and all-enveloping; and Dann McColgan's laptop beats and synthesiser pulses, while more mechanically insistent, introduce a musical factor from a different era that may well be the key to why Le Thug rise above the retro fad. The melody lines on this six-track EP have a deceptive simplicity but it's the slow harmonic changes of direction that will make you swoon - those and the sheer sonic completeness of the studio production.
Alan Morrison
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