Black Coats & Bandages

Just like their head-spinning debut Rua, the second album by Australian collective Clann Zu is close to impossible to sum up in an easy sentence, because there are so many comparisons to make. Sigur Ros and Godspeed You Black Emperor! have to be mentioned early, because the album's more contemplative moments, like the ghostly "You'll Have To Swim," bear a striking resemblance to those bands and their post-slowcore ilk. Elsewhere, however, there are songs like the declamatory "From an Unholy Height," which mixes a prominent, deliberately repetitive bassline with distorted, overdriven accordion and keening electric violin, sounding like some bizarre mix of Joy Division's post-punk gloom and fusion-era Frank Zappa, and that's before the lyrics, a seething condemnation of the Catholic church's clergy sexual abuse scandal worthy of Siouxsie Sioux, kick in. Singer Declan DeBarra gets a few comparisons to Radiohead's Thom Yorke, but unfortunately, that's largely because both men can be terribly annoying, affected singers; his native Gaelic tongue in the oddly soothing Cure-gone-R&B groove of "An T-ean Ban" elicits DeBarra's best vocal performance. Black Coats & Bandages is undeniably flawed, and several listens will be necessary before it all begins to make some kind of sense, but as perhaps the most wide-ranging and eclectic band this side of Canada's Broken Social Scene, Clann Zu continue to impress.