Relax. The new Alt-J album is good.

More of an EP though.

Despite what haughty music blogs named after multi-pronged farm tools might snobbishly spit into the online void in between sips of unicorn tears or whatever those people drink on the job, the new Alt-J album Relaxer is good. Better than good, it’s great, although I feel as if this statement needs a pretty obvious qualifier: it’s great, if you’re a fan of Alt-J.

So yes, if you’re gonna pitch up expecting anything other than a collection of chronically mellow tracks— or rather, ballads… soundscapes? — from an album literally entitled Relaxer you’re likely to end up sorely disappointed and a bit sad for all of the 39 minutes it takes to get through this (more-of-an-EP-than-an) album.

The truth is that Alt-J has definitely cultivated its own potent identity in its short three-album lifespan, something that is impressive and commendable in a global industry hyper-saturated with regurgitated bubblegum wunderkinders and brandname whisper starlets. Alt-J’s hard-earned identity is a unique one and centers on Joe Newman’s mutilated lyrical content and characteristic nasal delivery, as well as the band’s agitated, almost impulsive tinky-tanky instrumental arrangements. They also seem to really like binary code, spelling out words, and famous dead people.

Sure, this is no An Awesome Wave or This Is All Yours, both of which were sprawling works of musical mastery with more-or-less fixed thematic threads at their core — concept albums, without saying so. Relaxer is exactly what it claims to be: a chance for both the band and the listener to take a breather, to experiment with something wholly new. It’s the musical equivalent of a palate cleanser. Let’s get into it.

Standouts Moments:

3WW

Named, presumably, after the “3 Worn Words” (“I love you”, also presumably) mentioned at the start of each chorus, 3WW kicks off at a slow burn with simple, plucked acoustic guitar, some shaker and the deepest of bass, before ushering in the inexplicably unprocessed vocals of the band’s keyboardist Gus Unger-Hamilton. But 3WW’s real highlight is when the song fully opens up to the husky rasps of Ellie Rowsell of Wolf Alice fame. Sexual:

Girls from the pool say “Hi”
The road erodes at five feet per year
Along England’s east coastline
Was this your first time?
Love is just a button we pressed
Last night by the campfire

In Cold Blood

By now it should be common knowledge that Alt-J rarely releases anything without dropping some kind of insider reference or obscure in-joke. In Cold Blood begins with what at first might seem a nonsense numerical sequence,

0-1-1-1-0-0-1-1,
Crying zeros and I’m hearing one-one-ones

which, as it turns out, is just an overly involved way of writing the UTF-8 code for “Δ”, the capital letter delta, a symbol that is synonymous with the band itself (Alt-J is also the keyboard shortcut for Δ, something that — considering you’re reading this — you’ve probably already figured out). In Cold Blood is a groovy, trumpet-laden homage to a summer’s day spent beside the pool cracking a cold one with the boys — but with a sinister homicidal twist. Also, that snare sound is Killer.

Deadcrush

My personal favourite. Deadcrush — meaning a crush who has died, duh— is a sickly smooth ode to two of the band members’ historical crushes: Anne Boleyn, ex-Queen of England and the second wife of King Henry VIII, and famous American photographer Elizabeth “Lee” Miller, best known for her work as an award-winning correspondent for Vogue during World War II.

Extraordinarily pretty teeth
Beauty lingers, out of reach
You’re my DC oh Lee, oh
Man Ray went cray cray over you
Capturing but never captured
You’re my DC oh Lee, oh

This is not the first time the band has dabbled in references to dead war photographers in their work; Taro of 2012’s An Awesome Wave told the story of Lee Miller’s contemporaries, lover/photographer duo Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, both of whom were tragically killed on the job. Strange kink you got there, guys. Anyway, Deadcrush is a dangerously addictive track.

House Of The Rising Sun

A cover, but also not a cover, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. Newman uses all of one verse from the original 1964 The Animals track of the same name. Other than that verse, the composition’s chord progressions, instrumental arrangement and lyrical content are all totally original and lend a cinematic ambience to the track that is, for lack of a better term, fucking beautiful, — as well as a sense of aching nostalgia that sticks with you long after the final note has rung.

Like a bird flying over a forest fire
My father feels the heat beneath his wings
And in debt he leaves for another town
Where he gambles and, drunk, he still drinks

My mother hides from pleasure
And thinks of Father on her knees
Lifted in the arms of God
Away from New Orleans

The fact that I’ve highlighted only these four songs should not detract from the greatness of the remaining four; they’re lovely, if not terminally chill. And so one can’t fault Relaxer on musicality or creativity, and certainly not on effort. One could fault it on personal taste or genre preference but in the same breath one could also question one’s decision to listen to an album called Relaxer expecting any other outcome other than one’s ultimate relaxation. So.

Alt-J has once again managed to reinvent itself, remain relevant, interesting, and true to their trademark sound, skillfully stirring a brimming cauldron of musical influences and sounds with the neck of a battered Telecaster. The consequent dish makes for one (rice) cracker of an album.

8.5/10 seems fair.