Album Review: Nicholas Allbrook - Pure Gardiya

As his recent solo shows have indicated, Allbrook wants to operate free of accepted conventions and the inevitable expectations that arise from his old work with POND and Tame Impala. Rambling and volatile, they seemed to function on the principle that nothing was prohibited; everything was up for grabs.

With cascading piano lines and sparse, aching strings, In the Gutter By The Park'n'Ride opens Pure Gardiya with a pristine beauty that suggests Allbrook's been subsisting on a strict diet of Sigur Ros and nothing else. One could be forgiven for thinking Allbrook had made up Pure Gardiya's lyrics on the spot as on Advance he reels off a list of rhyming professions over occasional off-key whoops, making for one of the strangest lead promotional tracks from any album in recent times. In contrast to the sporadic howling and random note guitar solo of A Fool There Was, there are ramshackle little sketches like Karrakatta Cemetery, which is brought to life with some glockenspiel plonks and gently scraped strings somewhere off in the distant background. It's a big shift away from the crisp, clear tones of his debut Ganough, Wallis And Fatuna and way looser than his POND output.

Marked by ambition, Pure Gardiiya comes unstuck in numerous places, but in an age when so many are willing to risk so little, that Allbrook would be willing to risk spectacular failure in search of something revolutionary must be a good thing.