Electrelane – 'No Shouts, No Calls' (Too Pure) Released 30/04/2007

Delicate beauties Electrelane return with their emotive and joyous fourth studio album ‘No Shouts, No Calls’, a personal collection of positive tales of love and life, with up-lifting melodies, addictive beats and hypnotic vocals.

Since forming way back in 1998, Electrelane are the underdogs of great indie music in this country, and ‘No Shouts, No Calls’ certainly contests to be their best album to date. Opening track ‘The Greater Times’ will instantly blow your mind, and even the coldest of hearts will be well and truly thawed by the end of it.  The atmospheric organs, incessant beat, and heart-shattering lyrics imminently captured in the first line “you say you don’t know what love means anymore, since I found you I'm tearing down the walls”. 

One great talent of Electrelane is not just to experiment, but experiment wisely and effectively, like on ‘After The Call’ as a gentle indie guitar riff introduces the song to then kick suddenly into a lethal riff symbolic of the great Yo La Tengo. In fact a YLT theme runs through the whole of Electrelane as their tunes are persistent in the effort of making you feel up-lifted and emotionally charged. Take the mystical ‘In Berlin’ where in fact the band recorded the album, as the vocals ring “there is thunder in Berlin” and ‘At Sea’ which has a Coldplay-like atmospheric guitar absorbing the background from their 'Parachute' days.  You almost feel like your battery has temporarily lost its charge, as the mellowness has deflated your spirits to then suddenly be flown back into the fray with the tear-away disco beats and waving synths on ‘Between The Wolf And The Dog’, somewhere in between Blondie and Ladytron. 

All this before we have even reached the pinnacle track of the album ‘Saturday’, a hands-down beauty telling the tale of love and lost, about the relentless efforts to try and forget and move on, only to turn in your sleep with pictures and memories still vivid. ‘No Shouts, No Calls’ is faultlessly emotive with wonderful scope and imagination from one of the unsung heroes of our indie generation.