Rendered into all sorts of 21st century media, the image of Heath Ledger’s Joker rhetorically asking, ‘Why so serious?’, has become one of the most often used in posts around the planet; in a time when it feels like a chore to even poke our heads out from underneath the covers every morning, the idea of having fun seems so selfish as to almost be cruel.
As we’ve already established, The Orielles do things their own way. Whether this refreshingly laissez-faire attitude is due to their relative youth – the oldest of Esmé Hand-Halford, her sister Sidonie and guitarist Henry Carlyle-Wade is just 24 – or due to having emerged from a close-knit scene nestled around rock n’ roll frontier destinations Hedben Bridge and Todmorden isn’t clear, but neither is it important. This is because on Disco Volador they’ve perfected the galactic funk of their debut Silver Dollar Moment and embroidered it with a supernova’s worth of new shapes and textures.
By extension, this meant for their second album that as well as bringing perennial influences ESG into the 21st century they’re joined by the sophisticated art-pop of Stereolab and Broadcast. These are choices which could, without care, swamp the reputation of a band with such a brief history, but if any fucks are being given about that they aren’t apparent on opener Come Down On Jupiter, a shifting but surprisingly direct jam that sets the cosmically-orientated tone for the rest of the album.
Boldly operating without restraints like this isn’t a winning formula for everyone, but The Orielles sound like they feel at home, such that the Schlanger-isms of Rapid I feel perfectly natural, as are Memoirs Of Miso’s jazzily inflected undertones, the layered subtleties underlining just how far the quartet have come in a short space of time.
This surety is quite deliberate: returning to the bohemian surroundings of Stockport’s Eve studios, drummer Sid revealed that they knew the score: ‘All the influences we had when writing this record were present when we recorded it, so we completely understood what we wanted this album to feel like and could bring that to fruition, this is the sound of where we are at, right now.’
That reverse-zeitgeist when served up so nonchalantly is also thrilling, as the stubby chops of Bobbi’s Second World take things up a level, while when conceptually expanded out to the messy, time signature hopping 7th Dynamic Goo the three-songs-in-one end product somehow works against odds longer than the speed of light to one.
Out here no-one can hear you scream, even with the joy that closer Space Samba (Disco Voldaor Theme) will bring you, a cowbell-banging, riffed out thumper which brings everything full circle; here’s an effortlessly cool record which doesn’t project exclusion or an impossibly high cost of entry, instead one that cares about the party and the people. The Orielles are flying now, pushed on by solar winds and a warm glow of being happy for sake of happiness itself.
Why so serious? Why indeed.
