Big Deal
Album: June Gloom
Label: Mute
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.wearebigdeal.tumblr.com

Big Deal is effectively a duo comprising Alice Costelloe and Kacey Underwood, who made their record debut a couple of years ago with Lights Out, a quite dreamy and surprisingly impressionistic set which nevertheless made them many friends, not least for their compelling portrayal of what seemed no less than a slightly drug-fuelled love affair of an ambiguous nature. Such lyric preoccupations continue on into their second album, but with the big difference that their songs are "newly revved up", in other words rendered significantly tougher with the importing of a rhythm section.

The impact of this fully energised amplified enhancement is telling; it gives the songs a charging, almost punk edge and a harder, sharper character overall. Often this can be tremendously invigorating (as on the hammering, battering Teradactol), or else it injects a menacing, brooding demeanour (as on Pillow, which comes on with a grunged-up Deep Purple type riff); on some cuts though, like Swapping Spit, the backing riffs seem more routine by comparison and don't add a lot to the songs.

But there are also moments of relative repose (the cautiously languid Pristine, the acoustic-led return to the dream-world on Little Dipper and the more leisurely indie-guitar figures of Catch Up), while opener Golden Light builds from softly mysterious guitar to ominous grinding, pounding and the final track Close Your Eyes takes an episodic course from delicacy to discord. Probably a case of swings and roundabouts, but suiting the ambivalence of the lyrics if nothing else.

David Kidman