Django Django – Glowing In The Dark

British band Django Django’s fourth album brings more of what longterm fans have come to expect: arty yet muscular grooves, sleek vocal delivery and a heady mixture of electronic and rockish sounds. Their bag of tricks is put to good use on Glowing In The Dark, with a host of catchy melodies and lush accompaniments to ease the record along.

Opening track Spirals begins with an accelerating arpeggiator line, all very climactic and proggy, before a driving beat kicks in to anchor the track. The verses are impressionistic and aspirational (“I can feel it, can you feel it? / look onto the heavens to show / pushing off to a place / where we think we can put roots down and lay back”) while the chorus shows a delicious mastery of counterpoint, a skill also put to good use in penultimate track Hold Fast.

The titular lead single sports a rhythm section that fuses breakbeat and house, coupled with slightly nasal synth tones and a retriggering hookline as infectious as any club single from the past year. Meanwhile, Night Of The Buffalo wades into more experimental territory, featuring sequences reminiscent of Caribou’s Andorra and a flamboyant string-led coda, virtuosic flourishes glistening with reverb. After hearing one of these sonic detours it’s hard not to yearn for a few more of them, hints of a less orthodox direction that is mostly unrealised.

Kick The Devil Out is immaculately arranged and skilfully performed (if you can forgive the rather cringe-worthy intro) and Got Me Worried is another winner: a rockabilly tempo, a charming synth riff and bilingual verses coming together through the power of top-class songcraft. Django Django’s style is well-worn by now, and a little more stylistic or structural invention wouldn’t go amiss, but Glowing In The Dark still delivers the goods with ease.