You wouldn’t usually slap a Jagwar Ma track next to Macarena and Gangnam Style, but if you must, on the band’s second album Every Now & Then your excuse has come.
The ‘amoeba dance’ pads the last minute of the lengthy Give Me a Reason, with Gabriel Winterfield timing your every left and right step to the similar glow stick thud the Australians’ debut Howlin revved itself up on three years ago. Lofty hopes for a credible dance craze (it’s been a while since Psy after all) come a cropper after Winterfield breaks down in giggles, however.
That the touted neo-psych dance trio Jagwar Ma are really somewhere on indie pop’s rota (Howlin’s Come Save Me and That Lonliness testify as much), yet don’t quite do straight up songs so much as compact beats to move your torso against and not heart isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Ordinary plaits hip-hop grooves with the psychedelic knots their compatriots Tame Impala pull out of rainbowed air for fun. Loose Ends‘ dub-style bass and staccato brass vibes ease along the same route as the Andrew Weatherhall mix of Hallelujah to neat effect. It’s only by chance that the group built a studio right by where Weatherhall’s LP collection roosts, but the aforementioned producer’s remote influence in particular lubricates the record.
A more direct force comes from Warpaint‘s Stella Mozgawa. She drums on most of the numbers, even if most of the sticks sound questionably programmed. Inside the synthetic soul of O B 1, Mozgawa’s industrial treatment of it is an album high watermark.
There are experimental wings humming away that sometimes work, like on Ordinary, and at other times struggle to get a toe off the ground. Falling, a brief backward sound collage right at the beginning, is one such heavy foot. Say What You Feel‘s empty, “I gotta have you baby”, call outs seem part of a bid to create the sort of goliath global dance track that furnishes an international DJ’s villa for years. The less blatant Slipping has a stronger claim at being the durable tune to permeate the masses on the floor.
Near the end of Every Now & Then, ebb and flow synths press on Winterfield’s trailing vocals during the subtle Don’t Make It Right while High Rotations slowly turns through electronic backflips as candied harmonies trace the words, “I don’t want all your friends/I can get everything from within”.
Jagwar Ma’s music is there to be lived with friends, though, whosever they are. And the posh-sounding wild cats know it. That’s why they’ve made this impressive collection, so hard to stay in alone to.
