Ever wondered what the end of the world would be like? At the best of times, it’s a morbid fantasy indulged in regularly by contemporary cinema, but a preoccupation with an extinction level event doesn’t so much represent a boundless lust for nihilism on a global scale as much as it does the extent of our collective desire to discover the essence of our humanity.
The Phantom Band, while ostensibly uconcerned with any sort of apocalypse, are a striking example of the duality that such scenarios present. Take Deep Impact. At the precipice of non-existence, the protagonists face down impending doom by holding hands, lighting some candles and generally resolving to settle their differences. At the other end of the spectrum, aMad Max depiction of doomsday portrays a barren wasteland of decay and criminality, where sadomasochist punks descend into the sort of depravity that might see nearby Oxfams plundered for everything from hand-me-down jumpers to Danielle Steel paperbacks.
The Glasgow sextet exist somewhere between these two extremities of conjecture, insofar as any attempt to pin down their particular essence would result in a similarly contradictory juxtaposition. The Guardian’s Graeme Thomson was even compelled to surmise them as a blend of “…gothic folk, krautrock, doo-wop and electro”, an incongruous alliance of genres. Yet, as the heart-warming lament of "Island" silences a crowd of up-for-it Glaswegians, these irreconcilable genres come together in an entirely natural way, as if such a combination has been staring us in the face all this time.
The regular bantering between frontman Rick Anthony and the assembled congregation suggests that The Phantom Band have long since excised an itinerant habit of gigging under a variety of mysterious pseudonyms. Such quirks only add to the goodwill gathered on the back of their widely heralded LP, Checkmate Savage, and of the songs from the album, "The Howling" is received by the most cacophonous volume of whoops and whistles.
"Folksong Oblivion", however, best typifies The Phantom Band in précis. A beguiling mix of downtempo Balearic techno and anti-folk stylings, it manages to annihilate preconceptions of complimentary genres by conceiving a contradiction that simply works in itself. In a final act of idiosyncrasy, Anthony goes as far as to reveal how The Phantom Band have pulled it all off; in "The Whole Is In My Side", he concedes that he “was only trying to be a man”. And we don’t need anything as melodramatic as an asteroid hurtling towards the earth to acknowledge as much.
4/5
http://www.journal-online.co.uk/article/5856-the-phantom-band
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