Soap

the kabeedies rory, fab, katie and evan. with their childhood roots in both norfolk and suffolk they are the biggest thing to come out of east anglia since stephen fry's colossal brain. 'soap' is their second album, and their first release on fierce panda following on from their 2009 debut album 'rumpus' which, as the title may suggest, was a fizzbanging collage of yelps and twangs and jumpy artrocking angles which - to some sage old ears anyway - came across not entirely unlike claire grogan fronting the futureheads. it was generally described as being 'insanely life-affirming', got voted number 9 in artrocker's top albums of the year and kick started a touring schedule which saw near riots at latitude and hamburg's dockville festivals and hectic live shows with everything everything, darwin deez, hurts and css. that was then. and this, as they say, is now. "we're not writing songs as fifteen year olds anymore," says rory. true, there are still moments of twitchy fun to be had (cf previous singles 'come out of the blue' and 'santiago') but elsewhere 'soap' is the relative calm after the bubblegum storm of 'rumpus'. there are touches of paul simon's more sombre moods, a flourish of grown up brass here, a soupcon of morose strings there and some songs with titles like 'bones' and 'drowning doll'. oh, and then it gets really introspective and weird in 'underfloor lover'.