tUnE-yArDs - Nikki Nack

It’s fair to say listening to tUnE-yArDs is unlike listening to anyone else. Merrill Garbus creates a rainbow of sounds pouring from the speaker, raining down in vivid, joyous life-affirming Technicolor.
Previous album ‘w h o k i l l’ was a magical marriage of lyrics on femininity and sexuality and bright, glorious and bonkers melodies and sing-song chants. Now she returns with ‘Nikki Nack’, an album which remains just as idiosyncratic but is even catchier and even bolder.

Sonically, where the saxophone played a central part last time, here it’s drums and synths. In a strange way this helps capture the chaos Garbus brings and means ‘Nikki Nack’ contains some of the most immediate music she’s made to date. She’s harnessed all the tools she has to create something that’s still wild but this wild energy is channeled into focused songs.

Most of all it just feels so alive. Songs run into each other, their fluid structures meaning it’s a collage of stuttering electronic beats and wonky layers of life-affirming chants and synths building up on each other. Just take ‘Water Fountain’ where whirring rhythms are matched with lyrics about two-pound chicken dinners, cherry pies and blood money or the slurping synths on the dark but empowering ‘Manchild’.

The ideas never dry up: ‘Sink-O Stop’ talks about Pop Tarts, peace, love and killing over analogue-synth sounds, soul singer backing vocals and percussive thwacks. There are tender moments too such as ‘Look Around’ – ‘our friends have died waging war against their rulers’ – all handled with kindhearted aplomb.

‘Wait For a Minute’ is a startling standout: beautiful and poignant and capturing what’s at the heart of this album. The song talks of suicide – in soft vocals she sings ‘Today, I’m feeling like I live on a ledge and one day I’m going to fall off the edge’ and ‘Not knowing what the future will bring is always wrecking my day’ – but the answer is to try and take a moment, that there are better things around the corner.

Because despite the weight that this album carries, the overall feel is of a celebration of life itself. Garbus is a bright light in the night shining out. As she sings on Hey Life: ‘Hey life I love you so much / I scream and shout’. And with her own scream she’s telling her story in only the way she can. Brilliantly.