Infadels – We Are Not The Infadels

Cast your minds back: It’s the early ’90s, dance music rules in club land and the guys with guitars play baggy, psychedelic indie anthems fused from the desire to get down and party at a gig rather than hurl yourself into a bunch of strangers.

Then fast-forward to today: dance music has more or less lost its edge, bar a few stalwarts that have kept their cool over the years and the future – hybrid blends of dance/rock like LCD Soundsystem and Radio 4. Infadels are somewhere between these two eras in electronic music. The guitars are there, but so are the squelching bass lines, acid house build-ups and house music energy. Basically, Infadels are a little bit of confused, but in a mashed up, out of control house-party kind of way…

Somewhere in We Are Not The Infadels, there’s funky guitar twangs (Love Like Semtex), ska shuffling (Top Boy) out and out floor fillers in the mould of today’s dance pioneers (Jagger 67). The general feel is that there is one hell of a party when you invite Infadels over – you’d either be dancing like a twat, posing like one, or, in the more sedate, laid back tunes on here (Girl That Speaks No Words or Stories From The Bar) in a substance induced fug either talking nonsense to a willing stranger or thanking the world for your existence.

In fact, the only time things do go a bit awry, and you think you might have had enough of this lot is when you step back and listen to the lyrics and sentiment of some of the tracks. Sometimes it’s the usual dance music cryptic clue: “To send the sea back out/get off the sidelines” (Love Like Semtex) at others it’s just a bit of a half-arsed social commentary: “You get your love from the web cam channel/watching the brunette with the house mate flannel” (Reality TV).

Lyrically, Infadels might sound more like that guy talking codshit to you on the couch sometimes, but to their credit, the words here are an extension to the melody, and that nearly always cuts through with quality.

We are Not… has all the hallmarks of a great party album: lively enough to get you moving, varied enough to keep you interested and cheesy enough in places that you might be a little bit embarrassed to put it on for everyone. Get over that, listen to this, or even better, go to one of their parties and see them live.