If there is one moment on Screaming Maldini’s debut that defines them, it is the quite frankly ludicrous synth break midway through album centrepiece The Albatross. For a moment you can’t quite believe what you’re hearing, a synth line seemingly parachuted in from a completely unrelated song, sounding so hilariously dated that it could have been lifted straight from the Sonic The Hedgehog soundtrack. But for some reason, and don’t ask me how, in the hands of Screaming Maldini it works.
This is the story of the entire record. Screaming Maldini try so hard to make you hate them, with their near pathological aversion to 4/4, kitchen-sink-included songwriting and unrelenting cheerfulness all vying for pole position in the obnoxiousness stakes. Yet the end result is not only an extremely likeable collection of songs but one of the most promising British debuts of recent years. For all their obscure time signatures and prog tendancies, Screaming Maldini sure know how to write a good pop song.
Frenetic opener The Awakening sets the tone from the off, Nick and Gina Maldini duelling vocals before unleashing a gloriously anthemic chorus of “oh-oh-oh-ooo-aaa-ooo-aaa-ooo-aaa-oh”s. Followed by the unashamedly joyful Life In Glorious Stereo and the soaring lead-off single Summer, Somewhere, which sees Gina taking the microphone to devestating effect, the band make it clear that the album’s frantically barked opening line - ”we’re not planning on a quiet one” - is no empty promise. It is not until the fifth track, album highlight I Know That You Know That I Would Wipe Away The Snowflake From Your Eye, that the pace lets up and Screaming Maldini show what they are truly capable of, that alongside writing should-be terrace anthems they are equally adept at creating moments of real beauty and subtlety.
It’s a rare moment of respite in an album which barely pauses for breath as it lines up the hits, and it’s soon back to business as usual with the record’s second half trio of The Extraordinary, The Silver Mountain and Minor Alterations three of the finest pop songs you’re likely to hear this year. By the time the album comes to a close with the canivalesque Four Hours From Now, a song in 5/4 which features a clap-along outro sure to confound and confuse audiences across the land, it’s hard not to feel exhausted.
If there is one criticism to be made of this record it is that it never really sounds like a cohesive whole. This is in part down to the band’s refusal to stick to any one sound for more than a few bars, but perhaps has more to do with the record’s long gestation period. A few new tracks aside, this album is largely a collection of 3 or 4 years worth of EP and single releases, and as a result it sounds more like a greatest hits compilation than a coherent musical statement in it’s own right. But really, when my main criticism of a record essentially amounts to “too many hits” it should be obvious that we’re dealing with something special.
Indeed while it may not be perfect, Screaming Maldini have still managed to craft an astounding debut here, a record full of invention and surprise. This is an album teeming with ideas, in the way that I Know That You Know That I Would Wipe Away The Snowflake From Your Eye suddenly explodes into life halfway through, in the unexpected a capella breakdown in Life In Glorious Stereo and, of course, in that simultaneously glorious and godawful synth break in The Albatross. As an opening statement Screaming Maldini couldn’t have done much better than this, but nonetheless it’s hard to shake the feeling that the best is yet to come. As Nick Maldini sings on Stutter, “we’ve got so much left to discover”, and Screaming Maldini are just getting started.
