Review - Ubyk 'Matryoshka'
Last time around, a spelling mistake nearly scuppered the sentiment of Ubyk. Click here to see the fine margin between 'in' and 'is'. Anyway, scrap all that. The brilliant Ubyk have a new EP out called 'Matryoshka' and what a strange creature it is.
Kicking off with the psych-folk of the title track, Ubyk make an impressive sonic weave with only two people. Delicate and spooky guitars tell you that the sixties are over, they're selling hippie wigs in Woolworths and that, the drugs clearly failed to boot down the doors of perception. Harmonies drift in and out, gently tugging at your collar telling you that "everything is going to be alright", before spinning you 'round and making you feel all creeped out. I like it.
'Work', which I'd heard on their MySpace sounds as good as it ever did. In fact, I said "It's like the sounds of Syd if he'd been spending too long with his Kinks LPs," last time around, and I don't think I can top that. It's stripped down psych to get lost in. It's quite obviously brilliant. Carrying on into weird and wonderful Wonderlands is the fabulously spooked out 'Merry Go Round'. It's a fairytale nightmare that whirls and canters and is just the right side of unsettling.
As a whole, it's quite difficult to believe that Ubyk hail from America. They sound so... English. Not just that. They sound like they grew up in a pastoral England and overdid it on the grass with the people of Joe Boyd's stable of acts. Man, while English singers are freefalling into country, our American cousins are sounding more like our Britfolk than ever... and it's great.
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