Last year's fabulous Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? was quite the multi-level pileup of ideas and melodies, but even that was no preparation for this one. Yet although sticking noise-drone "Nonpareil of Favour" in first probably shook off many of the uncommited, beyond that there's nothing difficult about it at all beyond its central motto of 'why have one chorus when you could have five different ones?'.
Essentially I've loved anything that even comes close to pulling off this level of ridiculous ambition since Mansun a decade ago (and doesn't the mocking response vocal at the end of the first part of "Triphallus, to Punctuate!" sound just like Paul Draper??) so the more song sections the better, when they're all wrapped up in such unfailingly catchy hooks and new ideas are sprinkled across them all.
Lyrics that switch between the intriguely abstract, the overtly sexual and the hilarious, or else manage all three at the same time ('Texting your freaky fantasies to my phone/Black condoms on vanilla icecream cones', anyone?) are also welcomed, and have really stepped up a gear even from last time. There there's the ocassional moments of sincere and clear emotion like the lovely nostalgia of "An Eluardian Instance", which thanks to context actually sound like the most bizarre things on the album.
Compressing a large proportion of the history of modern pop into its length, chewing up and throwing out styles as it goes, it's very much to Kevin Barnes' credit that they near enough all succeed and form a constantly engaging whole.
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