Polaris - ‘Polaris’ (Gringo) Released 10/04/06

Behind every burgeoning scene that bursts its banks and courses into the mainstream, there are unsung heroes that go without credit, either scrambled over by copyists and opportunists or merely content to continue untroubled by commercial concerns.  The Polaris story is a little bit like this.  With only one previous album to show for a career that spans back to 1993, John Peel favourites Polaris haven’t really been bothered about cracking the big time. They have, however, been bothered about making their own strange and beautiful music. After spells in Bilge Pump and Quack Quack, the members came back to the core unit to make their second album together. Recorded in one day but seemingly a lifetime in the making, this is the sound of mastery.
 
Post-modern Leeds rock bands such as ¡Forward, Russia! and That ****ing Tank may or may not have been paying attention when Polaris brought out ‘Belated’ in 1998, but without that album it seems less likely that bands like those are sprouting up in Leeds today. ‘Polaris’ is very much a continuation of the DIY ethic and instrumentation-heavy arrangements that mark the band’s work to date.  Andrew Pollard’s vocals breeze over the music like jets of air while the sound beneath him swings from abstract funk (‘Conquering Small Places’) to the kind of post-rock noise that Mogwai have made their own (‘You Don’t Know Things').
 
A fault with this album lies in the live, trickery-free sound which leaves the listener hankering for a bit of variety at times, perfect though that mood may be for the tracks here.  It’s beyond doubt that Polaris have their sound boxed off and can drag you from the gritty depths of their black noise to satellite heights of harmony in the space of a tempo change; but that does leave you wondering what they would sound like if they really ****ed with their sound.
 
To be fair to Polaris, such criticism is a little like watching your football team putting five past the opposition then wondering why they couldn’t have got six.  As ripples of vibraphone wash over the warm, almost jazzy chords of ‘Out Of Harm’s Way’, it’s hard not to feel pretty damn happy with life.  Polaris may not want the big time, nor indeed be equipped for it, but make no mistake: this record is more ambitious than a nation of Kaiser Chiefs.