After receiving a considerable amount of indie hype over the last couple of years on the strength of some promising singles and last year’s Progress Reform mini-album, this month sees Leeds-based post-rockers iLiKETRAiNS unleash their first-full length album. Elegies To Lessons Learnt has met with a distinctly mixed early reaction, however, and understandably so. Their strength and uniqueness had always lain in their subject matter – songs which exposed the darkest, most tragic corners of history.
This album comes complete with an accompanying essay booklet which explains the story behind every song. The essays themselves are fascinating, but leave the lyrics looking facile and pedestrian. It’s tough to weave a strong narrative through a song, and much harder still if everyone already knows how the story goes.
The other real issue with Elegies is that when you listen to 11 iLiKETRAiNS songs in a row, they tend to form a miserable, homogenous blur. So I was interested to hear whether, in a live setting, they would be able to shake off the strangely flat feeling that pervades the album.
They start well, opening with 25 Sins, which details the Great Fire of London in 1666 and is one of the more memorable moments on the new album. Next up is Terra Nova, from Progress Reform, which remains their best song by a long way. It’s a towering piece, glacial and magnificent, and is a clear marker for what this band is really capable of.
Sadly, it turns out that listening to 11 iLiKETRAiNS songs live is also a bit of a homogenous experience. Songs from the new album blur inoffensively but unrecognisably into one another, while being painfully shown up by early single A Rook House For Bobby. More than anything, you just wish vocalist David Martin would, just once, break out of his cut-glass baritone and let his voice show some emotion (unless, of course, arch historical doom-mongering counts as an emotion, in which case he’s possibly the most emotional man in Oxford).
Not that their set is without its highlights. The background visuals are hypnotic and genuinely add to the songs’ content (when they’re not hidden behind the drummer, that is), and when the band climax into storms of violent noise it’s hard to deny their raw instrumental power.
At one point, someone in the audience shouts “This is an awful place,” echoing a line from Terra Nova and referring, of course, to the shiny new Carling Academy Oxford. “It’s not that bad,” frontman Martin replied, and he’s right. It really isn’t that bad, just lacking somewhat in character. And for all their unusual subject matter, iLiKETRAiNS’ music could also do with a little more character. A little heart. And a lot more variety.
