Django Django – Glowing In the Dark

For the better part of a decade now, Django Django have been trying to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle spark of their debut. While the follow-up, 2015’s Born Under Saturn, made up for in sheer groove what it lacked in ambition, the Edinburgh-acquainted four-piece’s third release Marble Skies was marred by the feeling that the band were just going through the motions with diminishing returns, making incremental improvements to a machine that was in need of a total reboot. The band’s latest effort doesn’t fully shrug off the creeping sense of familiarity, but for the first time marks a real step forward.

Glowing In the Dark’s most successful moments are those that stray the farthest from the band’s blueprint of sun-washed guitars and cascading vocal harmonies. For the first time, they pull back a bit on the vocal theatrics and allow the instrumentals some room to breathe. The Ark reveals itself a refreshingly moody melting pot of squelchy acid synths, irregular percussion and what sound like unearthly animal calls, while the arpeggiated synth on opener Spirals gradually accelerates to a thrilling crescendo, giving way to a crunchy, propulsive bassline.

Django Django’s greatest strength has always been their ability to create idiosyncratic neo-psychedelic soundscapes. All they had to do was let them shine a bit.

Listen to: Waking Up, The Ark, Spirals