Navvy: Idyll Intangible

Jul 28 2009 by Andrew Welsh, Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

ART rock goes pop on Navvy’s debut album, Idyll Intangible.

The boy / girl four-piece, who were formed from the ashes of several underground bands in Sheffield with unlikely names such as Texas Pete and Wisconsin Death Trip, are signed to the highly appropriately titled Angular Recordings.

Recorded over eight days with producer Alan Smyth using seven vintage synths, a mountain of percussion and a 12-string guitar, the final result is the sound of late-Seventies post-punk experimentalism replayed in 2009.

Opening track Navvy bears an uncanny resemblance to Nineties Scots pop legends Bis, but it’s the influence of the likes of The Fall, Devo and Pere Ubu that pervades the set.

The band sing about mundane, everyday items like plastic bags, buildings, TV documentaries and books, but their sound is anything but dull.

Throughout there’s a fractured feeling to the proceedings, with Navvy’s music purposely taking expectations, breaking them up and re-assembling the component parts in anything but the expected order.

Idyll is a choppy cut ‘n’ paste job that follows a fine tradition of abrasive, growling indie pop that goes all the way back to Adam & The Ants’ debut Dirk Wears White Sox in 1979.

Navvy (pictured) can be found touring with the likes of Noisettes, Vic Godard and Clinic in between spells grafting at the leftfield pop noise coalface.