iLIKETRAiNS: 'Elegies To Lessons Learnt'

Though they claim to be morose, iLIKETRAiNS must have a well developed sense of humour. Promotional material for the band handed out at music festivals this year included a plastic wallet for your railcard, an unusual gift, which only serves to highlight the question of why a band so interested in ideas have chosen such a peculiar name. Maybe the humour is unintentional, a sad and all too frequent affliction for overly serious musicians, or maybe the group feel that their subject matter - the frustratingly repetitive character of history and the implications that has for notions of progress - can only be adequately dealt with by adopting a wry and dark ironic stance.

The album is divided into small stories about or from the perspective of tragic figures in history. Interestingly quirky stories are told (The Salem Witch Trials, The Great Fire of London, the assassination of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval) which attempt to avoid the clichés attendant in an examination of grand historical narratives. Some of the lyrics sound pompous and preachy - 'Voice of Reason' and 'Twenty Five Sins' really stand out in this regard - and there is a sense in which all of this is just so much intellectual posturing. For a number of tracks, the overly self-absorbed singing style descends into bathos without the power of that musical machine. But perhaps that’s a gamble ILT have taken, and it pays off more often than not.

Opener, 'We All Fall Down' sets the tone for quite a lot of the record by constructing a guitar/drum post-rock edifice that is convincingly noisy and really satisfying. Of particular note is 'The Deception', which tells of an attempt by a round the world yachtsman to trick Britain into believing he had circumnavigated the globe. His descent into madness is charted in words and music, which go hand in hand to whip up the mood into a frenzy of paranoia. 'We Go Hunting', about the Salem Witch Trials, is a Cave-esque groan on a cinematic scale. No doubt the theme has been handled by other crooners decked in black, but probably not with this aplomb. We suddenly feel thrust into a clearing in some woods, forced to gaze upon the horrific spectacle of bodies hanging from all the surrounding trees.

This is an album that needs to be listened to closely but the appeal is unlikely to be wide. For those interested in the exploration of a particularly dark strain of thoughtful English music, 'Elegies To Lessons Learnt' should provide fruitful hours of careful consideration.

Released 1st October 2007 by Beggar’s Banquet.

Written by Huw Green.