The Phantom Band - The Wants

Convened in Glasgow, The Phantom Band emerged last year with ‘Checkmate Savage’, an album that stirred folk into a krautrock broth, creating an oddly primal music that bore currency but also faked the grey-whiskered experience of blues veterans. In short, songs as old as the hills with a modern finish. ‘Checkmate Savage’ was raw, simmering with controlled aggression, but let the light in when it went motorik on standouts ‘The Howling’ and ‘Throwing Bones’, fusing spiritual fervour and even doo-wop vocals with propulsive grooves. It felt relevant, skillful, self-assured.

And that confidence is still rock-solid. ‘The Wants’ again throws a trolley full of ingredients into the stew, discovering a flavour somewhere between Nick Cave and Kraftwerk, Johnny Cash and Can, David Bowie and The Beta Band – and the results are even better. Its nine tracks are varied but never stray far from their dark furrow, with Rick Anthony’s floor-shaking vocals, grizzled and portentous, the rope that hangs everything together. Every song is a monument, a forbidding piece of musculature – but macho guff aside, each is a cracking tune.

Sparks of melody and earthy harmony leaven the gloom around opener ‘A Glamour’. Its honky-tonk blues dissolve into a mantra, a near-pagan quality that suits The Phantom Band’s Wicker Man otherness. Always nice and unsettling, they sound like bondage-phase Depeche Mode on ‘O’, depressed synths sulking around a yelped falsetto chorus. ‘Everybody Knows It’s True’, with its choppy glockenspiel and barbershop voices backing the gruff Anthony, could be Four Tet fronted by Peter Mullan. No higher – or less likely – praise.

But ‘The Wants’ pivots around its fly-by krautrock specials, ‘The None Of One’ and ‘Mr Natural’ gloriously repeating Checkmate Savage’s tricks, this time enhanced by more obviously electronic coating. ‘The None Of One’ is epic, evolving from Jim O’Rourke-style acoustic pickings, through a folk melody brimming with purpose and burgeoning intensity, to an acid pulse that thrills until synthed harmonica brings the entire construct to a simmer. ‘Mr Natural’ follows smoothly, more Kraftwerk than Frankie Knuckles, before its final furlong is teased out by the sort of warm guitar solo you’ll want to hug.

The last third of the album sees the Scottish R&B of The Beta Band reignited for the big, waddling synths of ‘Walls’ and ‘Into The Corn’’s Wild West menace, the latter once more unfurling into an electronic climax. Most of these songs are lengthy, roomy enough to dive through a number of movements, always too fresh to get bogged down in the apocalyptic sentiment. Restless like this, ‘The Wants’ is certainly ambitious but the bravado pays off as it surpasses its predecessor, honing an electro-shock blues that gains power with every play. One of the albums of the year, no question.