Love of Diagrams : Mosaic

<a href="Reviews/Album_Reviews/Love_of_Diagrams_%3A_Mosaic/"><img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/loveofdiagramsmosaic.jpg" alt=" " /></a> After making a name for themselves with their energetic live performances in their native Australia, Melbourne’s Love of Diagrams jumped to American indie...
7.4 Matador
2007 

 After making a name for themselves with their energetic live performances in their native Australia, Melbourne’s Love of Diagrams jumped to American indie label Matador, and their sound jumped as well.  First and foremost on Mosaic, unlike on their 2003 debut LP, The Target Is You, the band actually sings.  Unfortunately, that is really the main drag on this otherwise interesting neo-eighties mash-up of post-punk and No Wave.

If one was told one was about to listen to a two-woman-and-one-man three-piece, Love of Diagrams is about the last thing one would expect to hear.  Their driving rhythms, noise-rock guitar, and shouted lyrics are anything but ‘soft and melodic’.  Easily their strongest element is the great bass lines of Antonia Sellbach, so strong that they let drummer Monika Fikerle move to her own beat, and leave guitarist Luke Horton to create overarching and underarching sonic interplays.  But Sellbach also saddles the group with her vocals, yelps that largely lack in any sort of harmony.

Where Sellbach’s bass line takes prominence, Mosaic delivers powerful results, such as with the record’s first two songs, the driving “Form And Function” and the dark “The Pyramid”.  Also well done are later tracks “Single Cable”, which has the feel of strong 80’s New Wave, and the slower, more emotional “What Was I Supposed To Do”.  But then there are pieces like “At 100%”, “All The Time”, and “Trouble”, where the compelling beats are hindered by Sellbach’s rather juvenile yelling.  Mosaic has some interesting diversions, like the weirdly echoing vocals of “Double”, or the quiet guitar-scratching of the record’s unnamed bonus track, but the single, “Pace Or The Patience”, is really just a lesser version of “The Pyramid”, as the beats more thud than rock.

This isn’t Love of Diagrams first stab at the lyrical business: that came with their 2005 single, “No Way Out”.  The band’s shift away the more straightforwardly rocking of “Out” to an updated version of eighties art-rock shouldn’t be that surprising, considering Mosaic was produced by Bob Weston (one-time assistant to the legendary alt-rock producer, Steve Albini).  Weston himself is a bit of early eighties art-rock update, as he serves as the new tape loops man for reunited early eighties art-punkers, labelmates Mission of Burma.  Instrumentally, there really is some strong growth and compelling sound to Love of Diagrams, but they have yet to master their voice.

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