Whilst a couple of tracks from Hot Club de Paris (MySpace) have always had their place in a few playlists, I had previously found the albums to be rather contradictory, never quite fitting together as a whole. But after finding a new love for the Liverpudlians with their last EP in February, and having recently been given a fantastic Decca 12″  of The Quintet of the Hot Club of France, after which they take their name, I thought now would be a perfect time to have a listen to The Rise And Fall Of The High School Suicide Cluster Band. After finally finding their own sound and self confidence with that last EP, they have continued to go from strength to strength on this one.

They manage to offer a depth of enveloping sound that lets you quickly forget that they are a three piece pretty quickly, but they haven’t lost any of their quirky song structures. You can still hear the influences of Talking Heads, XTC an Bloc Party throughout, but they have departed a bit further from a combination of those styles here.

Biggie Smalls and the Ghetto Slams starts offers something of a more traditional indie math rock track, and yet the chorus is almost a nursery rhyme. Free The Pterodactyl 3 has a riff that could almost be country, but don’t let that put you off. The harmonies and falling rhythms make it so much more. It’s jaunty, layered and enlivening like much of this EP.

But even when not making use often contradicting musical structures, Hot Club de Paris can make beautiful indie pop as in the closing track Three Albums In And Still No Ballad, which is, of course, a ballad. Or, is so for the first two and a half minutes before becoming a bizarre but beautiful Celtic influenced pop-rock anthem. Now I can’t work out how they have got those two parts to work together, but in this contest it just fits perfectly.

[MP3] Hot Club de Paris – Free The Pterodactyl 3

The Rise and Fall of the High School Suicide Cluster Band is also the 100th release on the consistently awesome Moshi Moshi which the band have called home over the last four years – so hats off to Moshi Moshi for reaching this milestone

[BUY] Hot Club de Paris – The Rise and Fall of the High School Suicide Cluster Band