Winning '11: 8 - Braids

Braids - Native Speaker

Braids' unconventional music is big on swirl. Thick, indistinct swirl. Murmuring guitars, bubbling keyboards, vast drifts of sound that arrive like avalanches. The 8 minute title track of Native Speaker (which, now I come back to listen to, I realise even has 'swirls' as its first word!) best demonstrates their success at a glacial pace. They tease full import out of every musical element before Raphaelle Standell-Preston snuggles into the warm drones in a half-asleep bliss, repeating 'having you beside me' and 'having you inside me' before hitting the title line with a wide awake force. 'Oh, you are my native speaker!' she cries and the music turns into a great raw rush with big slabs of bass saying, in the most gorgeous way: this is a definitive statement, this is all that matters right now.

As good as Braids are at the slow life, they also mix that slow swirl up elsewhere on the album, with fast rhythms and little trebly bursts of tunefulness. I've seen many comparisons of them to Animal Collective, but don't understand that band's appeal enough to have got to being able to confirm or otherwise with much confidence. Certainly Raphaelle as a singer is a massive asset in raising Braids above anything at all similar I've heard. Her elastic voice both handles the deep emotional moments and brings a wide-eyed glee, brittle and unpredictable, to the mixture of oblique and seriousness-shattering lines which make up much of their songs.

She brings a range of escalating emotions through in "Lammicken" despite just repeating a single line of 'I can't stop it'. The circling, liquid guitars of "Lemonade" introduce soft first lines - 'I don't want to go back there/I don't want to know what you're wearing/'There are black diamonds in your eyes/And just so you know, your skin is scaly', sung with humour and gentle concern, before she tears into 'HAVE you FUCKED all the stray kids yet?' with an almost scary delight.

The rest of the band manage to find a way to be in tune with her and each other even at the weirdest of lyrical or musical combinations. For all that Native Speaker is a deeply strange record at times and its narrative can be difficult to grasp at, it's one whose emotions come across loud and clear and always fulfils its impressive musical ambitions.