Laguna Meth - Laguna The Puma

- the brains behind this one-man project, Laguna Meth - has groany, moany falsetto vocals that just grate - there’s no kind way to put it, no sugar to sweeten the pill. Loads of people will doubtlessly love him but to us his vocals sound like fingernails being scraped down a blackboard, over and over. You either like listening to something like this or not and sadly from where we’re sitting this would test the patience of nuns.

That’s the bad news. ‘Laguna The Puma’ has plenty to recommend it otherwise, though, with tracks like ‘Sugar Shack’, which has a melody like the sun setting on a perfect white sanded beach, swirling organs and flutes floating by on the warm balmy breeze. The title track has plenty of satisfying Beatles-y chord changes, but sadly it plods on for too long, like trying to complete a marathon in concrete wellies. ‘Trippin’ is a shuffling, stumbling rhythm full of funk and, like Beck in his (almost) prime, but again it could done with having a couple of minutes shaved of its five minute duration to keep it from rambling. Another intriguing track is ‘Dead Dude From Def Leppard’, a sprawling rock monster with gutteral guitars and heavier than hell basslines providing the backing for a tale about getting wasted with, yep, you guessed it, the ‘dead dude from Def Leppard’. Crazy stuff indeed.

‘Laguna The Puma’ is a joyful, hazy, hazy surreal mishmash of an album but for all that it’s also a bit flabby round the edges. It’s got some moments that will have you revelling in its groove and then again others when you will be reaching for the fast forward button. It’s a shame that the latter moments - on balance - outweigh the former.