A challenge: listen to Errors’ debut album on your headphones, walking down the street without nodding your head. It’s impossible. I made my own music video in my head for God’s sake, as I walked – or more accurately, ‘strut-minced’ – my way along the pavement. But I didn’t care one bit. I only cared about this music.
‘Dance Music’ is a pacey enough introduction that places the Errors raison d’être firmly up front: this is everything you like about dance music being played by musicians in a band. With guitars, bass and drums. It’s bleepy and angular for sure, but it all sounds far enough away from a computer to be discernably human.
Indeed, the Glaswegian four piece have already garnered comparisons with Battles but there are major differences between the two outfits. Errors themselves don’t offer vocals at all (except for the cut-glass monologue from George Pringle on ‘Cutlery Drawer’) and in that way don’t suffer the singer-as-focal-point syndrome as Battles rightly or wrongly do. (Though, playing live, it’s clear that John Stainer’s kit is front and centre for a reason). Battles are a great band that somehow manage to sound like machines. Errors make the machines they play somehow sound very human.
Regardless, Errors’ music owes more to the building progressions of their Rock Action label bosses, Mogwai. The epic ‘Still Game’ has something in common with the ‘Gwai’s more clinical moments, with guitar lines that propel the song forward. If anyone (and it’s only in places) Errors’ sound more akin to Cougar, or even a less jazzery-pokery Tortoise, as they do on most recent single ‘Toes’. But that, as E&D say, is no bad thing.
The album’s pace slows right down on ‘Crystal Maze’ and the aforementioned ‘Cutlery Drawer’ but returns in the synth-heavy ‘Pump’ and ‘The Bagpipes’. Closing track ‘Alot of the Things You Don’t Isn’t’ builds its woven piano line into a crescendo via some lovely atmospheric guitar work.
Errors have nicely undercut their debut long-player with its own title. They’re wrong of course: it is something and it’s so much more than whatever.
Released 02/06/08 on Rock Action
