Late of the Pier - The Best In The Class / Blueberry

The new double A side from Castle Donnington’s Late of the Pier is a suitably weird affair. If it was anything less than frantic, schizophrenic and all out aurally confusing then in honesty it would have been a massive disappointment.

With the hook of “We’ve been planning this too long” delivered in almost alien harmonies Late of the Pier take a slow electro pop build up to a frenzied finish. Guitars are thrashed in amongst the techno wizardry that almost makes our brain explode. Yes, somehow ‘The Best In The Class’ manages to find our exhaust port and sling a proton torpedo in it, resulting in Death Star levels of mental destruction. We could say that it’s sci-fi-techno-pop-prog but really it’s just LotP; we’re too frazzled from the experience to think of it any other way.

By comparison ‘Blueberry’ comes close to being conventional. Shifting between Beatles style genteel pop and Daft Punk’s synthesisers that scrape the sky it’s the closest to listener-friendly pop that the boys have ever gotten. With lyrics about clouds, sunshine and the line “explosions of warm air flow”, Late of the Pier trick us into thinking that they’ve become hippies whilst holed away recording. That is until the final few seconds where they see the song out with something of a bang.

It’s a versatile effort by a group that had no need to prove themselves so capable. Their place in Britain’s underground pop cannon is assured.