Buzzin Pop Music

The Camel’s Back by Psapp

Psapp – The Camel’s Back, album review

The Camel’s Back is the third album from the dynamic duo Carim Clasmann and Galia Durant aka Psapp.

Psapp are renowned for collecting sounds and creating music out of them. Their popularity has been enhanced since the general admiration for ‘Cosy In The Rocket’, the theme tune to Grey’s Anatomy, and this has boosted their own particular brand of ‘toytronica’.

Their sound lies somewhere between pop, bossanova and electronica and this odd mix continues on their new album ‘The Camel’s Back’.

However, on ’The Camel’s Back’ there is undoubtedly also a nostalgia that underpins their upbeat rhythms and the jaunty Fisherprice keyboards.

The title track itself ‘The Camel’s Back’, with its blippy xylophone, sounds like the music from one of those musical boxes, and gives the whole thing a feeling of childhood reminiscence. This is reiterated in some of Psapp’s lyrics: “Let me ride upon your handle bars” (Fickle Ghost).

With this nostalgia, though, comes a certain amount of resignation, and Galia Durant’s vocals certainly have this melancholy tinge to them. The Spanish style of guitar and drums on ‘Part Like Waves’ is very much upbeat, but Durant’s vocals lazily float over the top of them, flattening the bustling rhythm and adding melancholy into the mix: “We all fall down / We are scattered on the ground”.

And Psapp are undoubtedly at their best in these moments. ‘Screws’, by far the most downbeat song on ‘The Camel’s Back’, is a slow piano ballad into which Durant’s voice really fits well, and the plodding tempo and dark line ‘There is a shadow / Every mile we go’  portrays Psapp’s leaning towards the dark paranoia of childhood as opposed to pure nostalgia. This is echoed in current single ‘The Monster Song’.

When Psapp exploit their jaunty rhythms, the results are mixed. The single is by no means a classic, and the funky album opener ‘I Want That’ becomes repetitive and messy.

On the other hand, the instrumental ‘Marshrat’, ‘Part Like Waves’, and parts of the excellently titled ‘Somewhere There Is A Record Of Our Actions’ are actually very interesting electronic mixes. This is the crux of the problem with Psapp.

When their ‘found sounds’ are interesting and original, they create successful music, but the predominance of normal guitars, organs, pianos and drums means that their music can often sound like a poor version of contemporary pop songs.

‘The Camel’s Back’ is out now on Domino Records and promises both fun and sorrow in varying amounts over the twelve tracks.