Ham is the second album for London-based four piece The Chap. Although infused with a wry deadpan humour (targets include the music industry, day-to-day tedium), the album’ sheer musicality and vibrancy are its saving grace. A wildly eclectic piece of contemporary pop music art, Ham recalls the energy and playfulness of post punks Devo or The Flying Lizards, as well as more contemporary almost electro-clash influences. Tracks like “Woop’ (bendy jazz chords and spoken word lyrics), “Auto Where To’ (a futuristic choral road song) and “Arizona’ point to a similar creative well that Khonnor may be drawing from; they are unusual and spacious tracks that draw you into the cinematic mid-tempo middle of the album. Instrumentally, Ham features wiry metallic textures – cello and string plucks, guitar harmonics (the atonal funk of “Baby I’m Hurtin”), traditional rock instrumentation (“Now Woel’, “Arts Centre’), bleeps and squeaks (“I Am Oozing Emotion’) and wailing feedback (“Arizona’). The Chap have acquired more confidence and are operating their music kit better, and this is how they explain the sonic leap forward from their acclaimed debut The Horse. Ham was home-recorded and sounds great – equal parts fuzz, synth and subtlety. It is a weird pop album that effectively avoids pigeonholing. Like LCD Soundsystem, The Chap are plundering pop music’ collective memory to find their way into the future. They seem to be making it up as they go along, and that is much of their charm.
Dan Joyce.
