When Music Feeds caught up with Eliot Sumner late last year she described the tone of her latest album Information as “urgent, motoric and desperate,” and she’d be bang on the money.
This talented twenty-something and daughter of rock-royalty (yep, her dad is Sting) has certainly delivered when it comes to her first full length offering under her birth name, having dropped her previous moniker I Blame Coco.
Sumner recorded the album fresh off the back of her European tour with Lykke Li and describes it as “the kind of music I’d probably listen to myself” – always a promising place to start.
From synth-pop, to straight up rock with a bold 80s flavour this album packs a solid punch. While Information digresses from and experiments with the usual genre tropes of electro-pop, it’s still perfectly accessible. Her low-register sultry vocals remain over her frantic driving beats – yet this time she’s added a few Krautrock inspired inflections, because why not?!
Perhaps another word to describe this 12-track assault would be unsettling, though by no means in a negative way – but rather the sense of being buffeted by the unrelenting intensity. This isn’t an album that simply washes over you.
Not only is it easy to be swept up in the chaos of the music, the meaning of each song is equally complex and layered.
Sure, the title track is a break-up song and After Dark (written with ex-Kaiser Chiefs drummer Nick Hodgson) is an anthemic ode to overindulging. Yet things get a little heavier with the apocalyptic themed Firewood, followed by the futuristic and genre-defying Species, which Sumner explains is “about how we’re evolving into this new species where things can be totally genderless and unidentifiable.”
While Halfway to Hell is a genuine rock & roll banger, if there is one track that takes the frenetic energy down a notch it’s probably Say Anything You Want, though don’t expect a break from Sumner’s lay-it-all-bare storytelling style.
You get a sense that Sumner doesn’t suffer fools, and if you’re foolish enough to cross her, you can expect a cutting and cold-blooded response wrapped up in psychedelic synth-pop.
Bottom line, Information is a bold, impressive and intricate offering proving beyond a doubt that Sumner has some serious talent.
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‘Information’ is out January 22nd, bag a pre-order here.
