Wake the President – Zumutung!

Channelling their Josef K, Orange Juice and Arab Strap infused sound through an increasingly discordant frequency, Wake the President to and fro between thrilling, immediate guitar pop and shadowy hypnotic experiments on this seductive second album. Zumutung! (meaning 'imposition') is streaked through with self-fear, anxiety and suspicion, yet the sensory force of the rhythm section and ricocheting treble modulations offset the gnawing sense of paranoia underpinning these songs.

 

Pitching a swarm of incomprehensible vocal echoes against a forbidding guitar slide, A Messiah Complex provides a perverse, captivating centre-piece. Your Expressions and This Is New combine knowing literary references with clean bass lines and sparingly layered keyboards, as Glaswegian twins Erik and Björn Sandberg succeed in adding new dimensions to their Postcard template, perhaps pointing the way towards a more capricious journey next time. [Simon Fielding]