I don’t like hip-hop, not keen on trip-pop, don’t care for bee-bop, but indie-pop, now indie-pop, oh yes now indie-pop is the best pop of all; and this record was never going to be anything other that out and out, direct, right down the middle indie pop. In times that have seen the stretch of water between alternative and indie become muddied, indistinguishable, and largely mis-understood ‘Viva Voce’ have, with The Heat can Melt Your Brain stamped indie firmly back on the map. As a two piece, rampaging through their house as well as their guitar shop to locate instruments ‘Viva Voce’ have become the duo that The White Stripes could have been had Meg been even mildly musical and had Jack not been a bit of a knob.

The Heat can Melt Your Brain is a real collection of influences, subverted through a vast array of musical, erm, implements. There are the standard guitar, bass, drums and vocals contributions of course, and these are tempered with audible inserts from kazoos, hand claps, saws, and the kitchen stove – literally everything but the kitchen sink. However, a cacophony this certainly isn’t, it all falls together perfectly to form a flowing set of luscious melodies and pitch perfect harmonies.

The set starts with a bruising, grating, rasping sub-electronic-folk salvo (which makes it sound as though it should be dreadful, but it ain’t) which melts beautifully into a slightly twisted take on All The Young Dudes, it’s a megalith of pop, who says so? I say so. This feel continues to sashay and swoon from your speakers right through Lesson No.1 and Business Casual with an imperfect ease that belies the status of this band – bear in mind this is their second only album (their debut in the U.K.), until it culminates with The Lucky Ones which owes more than a little to Lloyd Cole and the Commotions and the more sympathetic offerings of The Cure. The smooth, soft, swooning and swaying indie pop tempered by the sweet vocals of Anita Robinson which go as far along the way to melting your heart as the heat goes to melting your brain, apparently, before being interrupted by a brutal and brazen guitar break which despite working as a thrilling juxtaposition tries in vain to wrestle itself away from the body of the song. 

High Highs steals the opening beats from Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Darks classic anti nuclear pop chant Enola Gay and adapts them remarkable well into a low tempo, neat, flowing pop song, whilst Daylight is a much more free, swirling, almost psychedelic number, as though it got on the bus to Haight Ashbury but never quite made it there. The Center of the Universe (their spelling not mine) is a shimmering, shining, bordering on melancholic anthem for a doomed planet. The discordant bass lines and the pounding drums lain so low in the scheme of things allow the optimistic rays of piano and guitar to shine through magnificently.

Free Nude Celebs are always welcome in my house, especially when they come along accompanied by this scuzzy, searing guitar mayhem that attempts to kick the shit out of the keen acoustic thrum of the basic melody. It tries, it fails, but like in all the best things in life, it was fun whilst it lasted. Just when you though that the highlight of the album had surely been and gone along slinks Mix tape = Love, a thrilling duet which leaves your spine tingling and the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end, the tempting, alluring slide guitar, the luscious Beach Boys harmonies, better than the Wilson’s ever got close to paint a picture of the end of summer, the end of the romance. It’s a portrait of the girl getting on the Greyhound to Flagstaff whilst you stand in the Tampa bus station, promising that it’s forever, but knowing it’s over already. Heartbreaking, but at the same time impossibly infectious and instantly obvious. So much so that you don’t really want the closing song, They Never Really Wake Up to start at all, but when it does you realise that it is just a continuation on the theme, and could as easily be titled Mix tape part Two. This track aches and oozes, it’s laden with that kind of melancholy that doesn’t really make you feel bad, it epitomises the end of something great, you know it’s over, and that makes you sad, but the memories are just too good, and with them in your heart and your head you know that you can never forget, you can never be sad, and you will always smile.

Viva Voce, the band that’ll make you smile forever.

Words by Johnny Mac
 

(more by this author)