The Spirit Salon is a strange and compelling cd... or as my iTunes describes it 'unclassifiable'... Sounding a little like a distant cousin of label mate Momus, there are also shades of Noel Coward and George Formby, but reborn in an age of casio computers and analog bleeps. There is also a baroque or chamber music feel to some of the arrangements and instrumentation which is an interesting contrast to the lo-fi electronica... The cd starts slowly for me with the jokey 'Prologue' and the slow obtuse 'The shadows fall across the fridge, Frank' but by the time we get to (best title ever alert) 'My girlfriend was insulted by a futurist artist' we are in full swing...
'Catfish' has an arabic flavour and the excellent 'The Wanderer' has a touch of Serge Gainsbourg in it's delivery... as does 'Every young lad needs mates' which has a Kraftwerk-like keyboard phrase that will have the samplers reaching for, well, their samplers... 'Unlace me behind the hedge' is the best song about adolescent fumblings since Morrissey/Marr's 'Stretch out and wait' but Ross Hawkins takes the experience to a whole new level that Morrissey would find criminally vulgar. The last minute of 'Unlace me...' morphs into a lo-fi hip-hop treat that elavates the songs to one of the best on the cd.
With this debut Idle Tigers stakes their claim to be the new darlings of the lo-fi scene and 'The Spirit Salon' proves they have more than a ghost of a chance...
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