Vondelpark – 'Seabed' review
Much is made of albums being “stolen” every day by The Pirate Bay’s massed ranks, but regardless of your stance there, spare a thought for Vondelpark, victims of theft in a far more real sense: two years ago, following a pair of promising EPs, a laptop containing the only existing files for what was to be their debut album was nicked during a gig. Seabed is not that album re-recorded, but a new collection of songs, and, perhaps accordingly, a whiff of second-album syndrome – technical competence but stylistic uncertainty and mustiness – runs through the London trio’s debut.
At its best, on the woozy hypnagogic pop of Bananas, that uncertainty is a virtue, as dismembered rave vocals singing “Maybe I’ve seen you before” soar above blissed-out Balearic instrumentation to create an oddly dislocating, beatific sense of nostalgia. The opening Quest, too, smoothes the remaining edges off James Blake’s blubstep template to leave a seductively warm slip of a song. Elsewhere though, Seabed feels forced: the obsequiously named Outro For Ariel is chillwave by numbers, and successive songs in the album’s middle drift by so horizontally they barely register.
Under the circumstances, that staleness is a shame – were Seabed to have arrived alongside its contemporaries, and not two years late, it might’ve sounded far fresher.
6/10
