Argonaut
Forever
(keymailorder.com/forever)

ARGONAUT has everything alternative rock should be but rarely is. Carving new shapes into old formations, their unique style — engaging the grey matter yet danceable — is earthy but technically astute, cryptic but politically savvy.

Forever, their third studio effort, is an album that shows that their music has grown up to be as elegant as one of lead singer Lorna Argonaut's vintage dresses.

Wisely, with an industry headed for corporate oblivion, the band's releasing only 100 copies of a numbered CD which both captures their mercurial brilliance and shows that DIY artists can be music's saviours.

With eight new songs and four re-recorded numbers, this is glorious low-fi art pop. Opener Zero Said is a rousing refection on the hurtful elements of social media commentary. They Can Buy You, with its brooding alienation, builds beautifully before the bass kicks in, while Titanic Sinks has a catchy Americana tune with a clean guitar sound which charts a series of terrible events and how the media perpetuate the victim’s misery.

Skullkissing is an enjoyable reflection on Dracula’s “birth” in Whitby and what happens when a Goth music festival comes to the Yorkshire town. A Ray Bradbury quote: “Write a short story every week. It’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row,” inspired Nathan Argonaut to write a song a week. Having written four, he gave up and No Song, actually a great number, is the result.

March, with its free-flowing Velvets' sensibility, celebrates the month and the love that it can bring to life, while Everybody Crash has a funk-beat sound reminiscent of every great girl band.

A Colombian saying “some people are so poor, all they have is money” is the inspiration behind live favourite Not Rich, a superb statement of the band's politics. It has Lorna blasting out: “I am not jealous, you are not rich, you have lots of money but you are not rich,” as Nathan’s guitar careers off into a version of the Rebel Rebel riff.

Argonaut’s compelling fusion of sounds creates a vivid, raw beauty on a record that will define them forever.