Not Squares - Yeah, OK
- Written by Kenneth McMurtrie
This is very refreshing. The Belfast trio Not Squares have concocted a masterful effort out of the best bits of The Faint, Orbital and Clinic. Yeah, OK is danceable from the outset, recent single 'Release The Bees' (an initially daunting prospect at over seven minutes in length) opens the album in the style which is then maintained for the duration.
'Da Na Na', track two, goes down a more electro path than the one taken by the opener but keeps the pace nicely balanced before things go up a notch with the more insistent 'In Front' – all moody vocal elements and clashing cymbals. Quite a nice line in synth trills here also. Equally good as part of your running soundtrack or raising disco roofs. Or Amish barns for that matter, get the suckers up in half the time. The other track to have been lifted as a single, 'Asylum', follows a more conventional structure in a late Eighties afrobeat kind of style but underpinning it is still the driving beat so favoured by (and welcome from) the group.
'Nothing' introduces a nice change in the shape of some funky bass guitar, verging in fact at times towards Japanese Popstars territory though never attaining the weight of the other threesome's material. 'Ojos Para Volar' is yet another of the tracks herein destined (hopefully) to keep dancefloors filled through the winter months and beyond as they aim to take their live show throughout the UK.
Final track '53' is another seven minutes-plus affair and also a lot more low-key than its predecessors but anything it lacks in outright danceability is well made up for in the moodiness stakes. A fine debut album here then and a name to look out for on bills up and down the land in the imminent future.
