Send "Archie Bronson Outfit " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Archie Bronson Outfit's last album, Derdang Derdang, had a winning way with a tired genre, divesting psychedelic garage rock of all but its essentials: swaggering grooves, stabbing riffs, and gouging pop hooks. Aesthetic differences aside, songs like "Dart for My Sweetheart" and "Cherry Lips" were almost Spoon-like in their economy. And while ABO singer/guitarist Sam Windett's voice isn't conventionally pretty, he conveyed a rare emotional intensity, even danger. Derdang's timing, however, was unfortunate. Ahead of any garage rock revival, the 2006 LP dovetailed with the rise and UK chart triumph of Arctic Monkeys.No surprise then that, four years later, the bearded trio's copping a different sound-- one that includes synthesizers, dance beats, and Tim Goldsworthy's production work. Lame bandwagon-jumping? Actually, no. Former DFA-co-honcho Goldsworthy didn't stamp his dance-punk signature on every one of Coconut’s tracks, but the ones he did are uniformly ace. On first single "Shark's Teeth", ABO's buzzsawing guitars and punk instincts are preserved, but leavened with Hercules & Love Affair-style disco nostalgia. "Hoola"'s another peak, its cooing female backups flirting with Windett's strangulated yelp in a swirl of beats and hooks. Two psychedelic rave-ups on the record's first half, "Magnetic Warrior" and "Wild Strawberries", offer both delirious drone and expert popcraft. But Coconut stumbles midway through with "You Have a Right to a Mountain Life/One Up on Yourself". A title like that's a tip-off, and the song is indeed a malodorous heap of bellowing reverb, guitar noodling, and dire lyrics like "Eat your heart out/ It's yours to eat." "Mountain" is only four minutes long, but feels like 40. However, it may be preferable to the several cuts that follow. With little of their predecessors' electro-pop sparkle or psychedelic fireworks, but plodding rhythms and vanilla-flavored melodies to spare, tracks like "Bite It & Believe It" and "Hunt You Down" kill any momentum the album had generated....full text |
| Independent |
| If this week's releases were to be plotted on a graph, Coconut would come somewhere between the electro-industrial grooves of Black Light and the berserker impulse of Amsterdam Showdown, King Street Throwdown!. Which places it pretty close to The Fall's Krautrock-inspired motorik – in the case of "Wild Strawberries", a primal riff that just about stretches to a second chord, while slide-guitar plunges into a howling vortex and singer Sam Windett blurts indecipherable phrases, like a man fighting an overpowering current. It's as if he's trying to impose some semblance of sentience upon riffs seemingly determined to discard all civilised aspects in their lust for the primitive and instinctual; that he never quite succeeds is cause for some small celebration, as early tracks such as "Magnetic Warrior", "Shark's Tooth" and "Hoola" develop a nagging, hypnotic momentum that carries one through their darker corners. The two-part nightmare "You Have A Right To A Mountain Life/One Up On Yourself" pushes things over the edge with its intense, screeching caterwaul, each guitar chord being scrubbed away mercilessly before the next arrives: a scorched-earth policy adroitly avoided on the better tracks. Download this Magnetic Warrior; Shark's Tooth; Hoola...full text |
| Blogcritics |
| Coconut is the third album from British garage rock trio the Archie Bronson Outfit. It comes four years after their last album, the well-reviewed Derdang, Derdang, and six years after their debut, Fur. The Archie Bronson Outfit mix the stripped-down blues and garage rock of bands like the White Stripes and the Kills with the twitchy angularity of post-punk bands like Wire and Gang of Four. Singer/guitarist Sam Windett sings with shaky uncertainty, sounding like he's had too much disappointment, too much heartache, and too much coffee. He's backed by the propulsive rhythm section of Dorian Hobday on bass and guitar, and Mark Cleveland on drums. Their sound is kinetic, paranoid, and slightly out of control. It's a formula that can be very engaging, but can also wear out its welcome. They address this problem by bringing in former DFA member Tim Goldsworthy to produce. As part of DFA, Goldsworthy was responsible for the post-punk disco sounds of the Rapture and LCD Soundsystem, as well as the nouveau disco of Hercules & the Love Affair. He forces the Archie Bronson Outfit to reign in their garage rock and dabble in dance punk....full text |
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