CD Review: Sound Team, Movie Monster

It's a surprising rare thing for hecklerspray to be pleasantly surprised by an album; they usually confirm exactly what we expected from them or disappoint us hideously - we were once sent a thrash metal album containing a song called Ignominious Slaughter that we mercifully decided not to inflict on you.

So when Movie Monster by Sound Team dropped our laps, we couldn't figure it out at first. A band we'd never heard of with an almost deliberately vague name bringing out an album with a completely inscrutable sleeve - Movie Monster by Sound Team didn't exactly fill us with hope. Then, about two and half seconds after slipping the CD into our hi-fi, the strange sensation of actually being impressed by something came over us. And it grew. And it grew. Now we're under the impression that Movie Monster by Sound Team is a monumental, catchy, textured album that deserves to be heard by absolutely everyone.

Have you heard the new single by The Killers? Bloody terrible, isn't it - it's got a video that makes them look like U2 and sound like Meatloaf. So, now that we've written The Killers off, there's now a gap in the market for an indie band who can rush the shores and capture the mainstream in our name - and if Sound Team don't manage to do this with their album Movie Monster, we're going to be awfully disappointed. Quite simply, Movie Monster by Sound Team is an exceptional piece of work.

Regular hecklerspray readers (and, come on now, everybody is deep down) will have heard Born To Please, the first Sound Team single from Movie Monster by now. At first, Born To Please seems a strange way for a band like Sound Team to introduce themselves - it's a slinky, slightly unremarkable piece of indie - but, after a few listens, the subtleties of the tune begin to open themselves up. The song refuses to do what you expect it to, it slinks and snakes against the electronic sheen of the production, the catch in singer Matt Oliver's voice abruptly becomes strangely emotional and you realise that you were wrong at first; it's understated rather than unremarkable, and by then you're hooked.

And ride us sideways if there aren't better songs than Born To Please on Movie Monster by Sound Team. We'd be happy to froth away at how brilliant each individual track on Movie Monster is - from the 73-second teaser of an opener Get Out to Movie Monster's final track Handful Of Billions which superficially sounds like the song U2 have always wanted to make (one that manages to be epic and human at the same time) - until our hands fall off, but we won't. Instead, here are the highlights; No More Birthdays and Back In Town reference the grown-up spare groove of Gimme Fiction by Spoon - one of last year's best albums - with the former having a chorus that seems to only consist of the words "Kafka On The Shore" - the title of one of last year's best books.

Our praise for Movie Monster by Sound Team doesn't end there, either; the lysergic rush of Afterglow Years bursts into joyous life out of nowhere, and You've Never Lived A Day sounds almost exactly like what staring at the horizon from the top of a mountain feels like; all huge and widescreen, but imbued with a kind of awed restraint. Aside from a couple of tracks, like Your Eyes Are Liars - where Sound Team sound a bit too OC-ish for our liking, Movie Monster by Sound Team does nothing but surprise us pleasantly, and we'll be eternally grateful for that. A rare treat.

Now buy Movie Monster from Sound Team from Amazon

[story by Stuart Heritage]