Youthmovies – Polyp EP

It seems that the career strategy for any serious new band these days is to maintain the momentum of the debut album with an EP six months later. And though Oxford experimentalists and mates-of-Foals Youthmovies would balk at terms like 'career strategy', that’s exactly what they’ve done. It will come as no surprise to fans of their March debut Good Nature that Polyp EP is no less oblique, multiform and downright difficult. The music runs the gamut from trumpet-led math rock to slick electro, underscoring Beefheart-ian levels of lyrical weirdness: “Lachrymose, lachrymose, how you have your grip, twisted like a Möbius strip.” If such lines don’t have you reaching for the dictionary (or the eject button) you're just the kind of intellectual Youthmovies are evidently targeting. Congratulations. [Nick Mitchell]