The UK psych-rockers’ pan-genre approach benefits from a little extra curation and fun. As versatile as they are, their stylistic detours eventually feel like overkill.
When London-based four-piece Django Django began peeking out of their bedroom studio, around the dawn of the last decade, synth-toting psych-rockers were already climbing festival lineup posters from Brooklyn to Perth. But nobody else had a chopped-up robot vocal hook that could split the difference between the Mercury Prize shortlist and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, like their self-titled debut album and its wonky standout, “Default.” The next two albums, 2015’s Born Under Saturn and 2018’s Marble Skies, kept dabbling across styles—from surf-rock to dancehall—but never matched that early sensation of nerdish epiphany.
Turning into the home stretch of Django Django’s fourth album, Glowing in the Dark, a realistic-sounding doorbell rings (sorry, dogs!), an unidentified speaking voice that singer and guitarist Vincent Neff compares to comedian Martin Short’s gushes a quick greeting, and an indie-dance exorcism is underway. “Kick the Devil Out,” which combines Primal Scream’s gospel-powered backing vocals and the Rapture’s cowbells with the good-riddance schadenfreude of “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead,” illuminates why Django Django’s latest feels like a refreshing return to form. Though it ranges through drummer and producer David Maclean’s record collection as widely as ever, Glowing in the Dark homes in on the group’s most memorable set of songs to date—and it sounds like a little extra time curating has helped them loosen up and have fun, too. “One thing that we were really conscious of going into this album was to try to be a bit more playful with the songs and not get too bogged down with details,” bassist Jimmy Dixon has acknowledged.
Django Django finished Glowing in the Dark before the coronavirus hit, and some of the best tracks seem like attempts to transcend social problems that predated the pandemic and will almost certainly outlast it. “The world [was] a bit of a mess even before the lockdowns,” Maclean told a recent interviewer, singling out climate change and globalization. Opener and first single “Spirals” is a psych-rock anthem whose high-flying synths are almost intoxicating enough to sell what the feathery vocal harmonies are saying about “crossing the line that divides us.” The title track, appropriately flickering electro-pop à la recent remixers Hot Chip, harks back to “Default” with a stuttering cyborg vocal hook so catchy I’m willing to overlook the distinct possibility that it’s about the light of a smartphone. Less striking but still tough to hate is the strutting “Headrush,” a punk-charged rebuke toward some creep who says that “might is right.” That guy sucks!
Versatile though Django Django may be, their stylistic detours eventually feel like overkill. The bilingual rockabilly-goes-samba of “Got Me Worried” whisks by quickly enough to act as a palate cleanser, and cosmic synth interlude “The Ark” feels true to the band’s DIY sci-fi spirit. “Night of the Buffalo,” a clumsy show of solidarity with Native American tribes, picks up an extended violin outro that’s nice for what it is, but feels like a moment of self-indulgence. And the homespun folk of “The World Will Turn,” while not at all unpleasant, mainly reminds me of how Welsh pan-genre forebears Super Furry Animals did something similar with “Fire in My Heart,” from 1999’s Guerilla—right around the time they were warning that “The Man Don’t Give a Fuck” umpteen times over a Steely Dan sample.
Django Django would never do this; even at their most generous and direct, they’re still pretty damn polite, mad scientists who can never fully doff the lab coats. This drab reserve is most evident in contrast with labelmate Charlotte Gainsbourg, who infuses smoky charisma into “Waking Up,” a highlight that otherwise might’ve been merely the latest in a long list of songs about life on the road. Maclean, a DJ and sometime house producer who spent much of his youth trying to make hip-hop beats, recently said, “I’d love to do a whole album of collaborations, a bit like Gorillaz do.” It will be a shame if life on the road doesn’t return in time for Django Django to perform Glowing in the Dark on sunny festival stages, perhaps alongside woolly successors like King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. But it’s no shot to say that their real strength might lie in playing backup to someone more singular or subtle, so they’re not constantly serving the whole buffet just because they can.
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