For a brief period in the ‘80s, musical minimalism was as much a touchstone for new wave artists as early post-punk originators and modern pop stars, and while the style resulted in some of the era’s most indelible and inventive music (Talking Heads, for one), it didn’t last. Don’t tell that to English art rock band Dutch Uncles, though.
Time signature experiments, repetitious and complex xylophone and marimba riffs, dance beats, funky basslines, and vocalist Duncan Wallis’ swooping croon were the defining elements of Dutch Uncles’ first three albums, and not much has changed on their latest, O Shudder. Disregarding slight tonal adjustments between albums (the rollicking energy of 2011’s Cadenza versus the subdued beauty of 2013’s Out of Touch in the Wild, for example), Dutch Uncles have stayed true to their remarkably original (and often impenetrable) sound, a real feat considering how easy it would have been to straighten up and churn out accessible pop-rock as so many bands before them have done.
But then there’s never been anything typical about Dutch Uncles. This is a group that proved catchy and unique enough to grab the ears of American pop-punk superstars Paramore, of all bands, who claimed that their 2013 self-titled album was laced with Dutch Uncles influence (listen to the repetitive, infectious mallet phrases and jittery guitar work on Paramore mega-hits “Ain’t It Fun” and “Still Into You” for proof). The strange bedfellows even embarked on a European tour together a few months later to show appreciation, a fact that demonstrates, if anything, how damn hard it is to accurately place Dutch Uncles within the indie pop landscape.
O Shudder isn’t the inscrutable, rebellious record that Cadenza was, but it has many charms. The aforementioned ‘80s influence has been toned up in significantly in some places, as on synthesizer-heavy single “In n Out” and “Decided Knowledge”, which indulges in synth tom drums and cheesy-but-fun background vocals: “You’ve got it! / You know it!”. “Upsilon” has one of the album’s most transformative, melodic choruses, but the song’s ringing synths and plucky mallet sounds draw out the pastoral essence of Dutch Uncles’ most subdued tendencies. The prevailing effect of these moves is that O Shudder feels more pop-oriented and immediate, but still bound to the band’s abstract vision.
The melancholic ballads of Out of Touch in the Wild also return in the form of the piano-and-strings-driven “Given Thing” and the slow-building “Don’t Sit Back (Frankie Said)”. Taken together with the pop-leaning tracks, these songs show that O Shudder may possibly be Dutch Uncles’ most fully realized record, an attempt to stretch their versatility and expand their already-wide boundaries in the scope of a single release. There’s no sense of fatigue, frustration or laziness that can often afflict bands by the time they reach their fourth album, just the same adventuring spirit that made their first releases sound so vital.
O Shudder is not Dutch Uncles’ greatest record, nor their biggest experiment. It ends timidly, with the perhaps aptly-titled “Be Right Back”, a song that, while as pleasant as the rest of the album, has no sense of finality. It shows that Dutch Uncles, as far away as they are from contemporary conventionality, have an almost over-focused approach. It’s their strength, though, that they aren’t plain enough to make straight pop and not grandiose enough to make epic art rock; they’ve carved their niche beautifully. O Shudder pokes at the seams, as Cadenza and Out of Touch in the Wild did, but it still ends up being the best example of the band’s most definitive virtues and vices. A band doesn’t need to risk ruining their formula for the sake of change, especially when their path is so oblique to that of everyone else. O Shudder is another great Dutch Uncles album, and that should be more than enough.