London duo Jungle are to be commended for their desire to stay away from predictability. The result of their falsetto-voiced, twinkly alt-pop mission has been plenty of attention in the right quarters. Nominees for the BBC Sound of 2014, multi-million YouTube hitters, and hyped as festival musts-sees, they’ve certainly achieved hot band status, so it’s now just down to this debut album to dunk the ball through the hoop.
It doesn’t, really, although it occasionally reaches the right end of the court. Over the course of twelve songs the pair massage the android edges off electro-pop, smear it into the back catalogue of Daryl Hall & John Oates, then add a smidgeon of gentle carnival Caribbean tropicalia. The idea is intriguing but getting such a formula right is a tricky business (to put it mildly). The overall feel is somewhat ersatz. Plasticity can be great but, for the most part, Jungle’s version didn’t haul me into proceedings so much as leave me on the outside staring at all their prettily engineered shiny surfaces.
What’s more, other bands have travelled this path before, mostly Australians. Premier among them is Van She whose sunshine electro-pop and cybernetic optimism, this strongly resembles. Van She never quite hit the button either, although some cuts by their countrymen Empire of the Sun hinted at how things could be.
Jungle do occasionally nail their goals. The blissed out opener, “The Heat”, sets out their stall with a panache that makes the listener keenly anticipate the rest, the brassy funk sunshine of "Busy Earnin", the driving mantric pulse behind “Son of a Gun” is relatively gripping, and there’s a lovely sketched two minute whistling trip-hop thing called “Smoking Pixels”, redolent of Ennio Morricone. Jungle is, however, a great name for a band. When I heard it, I immediately wanted to wrap my ears round them, and the snippet I saw of them at Glastonbury also drew me in. They don’t yet live up to their name but if they choose to add a bit of grit to their formula and not be quite so Hall & Oates, they well might.
Overleaf: Watch the video for "Busy Earnin'"
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