Songs For Imaginative

It would have been easy - all too easy - to think you had Darwin Deez figured out. He's the irrepressible pop auteur who broke into spontaneous, synchronized dances on stage. The mischievous musical sprite who wrote songs that were as infectious as they were offbeat; songs like "Constellations" and "Radar Detector" which became bona fide hits and lodged themselves in the brains for days. He's the one who brought some much needed verve and colour to the dreary indie landscape and became one of our most off-kilter and much-loved popstars with his self-titled debut LP, released in 2010. But scratch a little deeper beneath the surface and you would have found more depth and melancholy than quirky first appearances might necessarily have suggested, and a sonic ambition which reached far beyond merely writing solid gold anthems in waiting.Entirely self-recorded and produced in Asheville, North Carolina, then mixed in London with Charlie Andrew (Alt-J, Eugene McGuiness), the resulting album is the most fascinating and thrilling record you'll hear next year, as Darwin flexes his muscles and moves into unashamedly uncharted territory. It's there lyrically, as he explores his solidarity with existentialism (on first single "Free (The Editorial Me")), and, uses the schizoid blast of "(800) HUMAN" as a "prayer for deliverance from the existential inauthenticity of laziness and submission". His penchant for irresistible melodies is present and correct too, as in "You Can't Be My Girl", which is, in essence, a glorious paean to a damaged, and impossible, relationship.