The Chap – Ham (Lo Recordings/Popfrenzy) (another review)

Four tracks in, it would be easy enough dismiss Ham – The Chap’ feisty follow-up to 2004 debut The Horse – as yet another smarmy, hazily-university-educated, indie-kid excursion into irony and “genre defiance’. Over-bent guitar strings squeal and kick within a cocoon of reverbed handclaps, sleazy bass licks and disco-inflected electronic noise, while emotionless, vaguely new wave, spoken word vocals lump watered-down condescension on the rock, electro and the music industry in general, never really committing to anything in the process. It’s easier that way, right? But The Chap aren’ just taking an easy way out. From amongst such pseudo-intellectual abrasiveness, angularities and off-kilterisms shines a strangely emotive and human dynamic. Indeed, following Woop‘ floating guitar harmonics, Auto Where To‘ cute drips of laptop percussion, drops of guitar and lovely vocal harmonies, an endearing, soft shade of pink begins to glow from the aforementioned Ham. Younger People is a moment of unparalleled clarity – a beauteously dense bed of restrained guitars and textural electronics shroud a singular, falsetto chorus – and by the time it comes around, the record has taken on an entirely different, recontextualised, revisionist flavour. Manic, engaging and ceaselessly interesting, The Chap’ Ham tastes like freaked out pop excursion, momentary whimsy and wonder; like smart-arse kids with strange, strange dreams, who are at least willing to share them.