Dancer

Glasgow based band DANCER release their debut full lenght album "10 Songs I Hate About You" today on Meritorio Records and it's amazing!

"The album came about somewhat effortlessly, piecing together old and new songs and striving to evoke the influences of the group: Life Without Buildings, Elastica, Owls, The Cardigans and Altered Images, into one swaggering debut dipped into a condiment of emotion and good humour." Dancer.

Written throughout 2023 and recorded over a weekend in August of that year, the band returned to Green Door studio and recorded it live to tape with Ronan Fay, as with their 2 proceeding EPs. Looking to strike the perfect balance between these previous extended plays and something more, they attempt to truly define a Dancer sound in the long play format. The 10 songs in questions push, pull and then elaborate on former characteristics - only now they are skewed into greater pop forms, caressed by jittery rhythms and searing guitarisms that dive into passages of melodic wool and warmth. All with an energy that even the band themselves are surprised to muster.

Once again this heaving audio mass is structured beneath the awesome vocals of Gemma Fleet, whose narrative and lyrical savvy paints a hundred colourful pictures in words. Exhuming  and examining fragmented memories of the 90’s, the technological breakdown of our modern age and the simplicity of love in a time of madness, all with a trademark panache and a voice like no other. At times her singing segues into spoken passages and vice versa, an instrument of sloganeering profundity that pirouettes across the landscape of sound and the  battery power bringing Dancer’s music into motion. Even when Fleet approaches absurdity with the lyrics of something like ‘When I Was A Teenage Horse’, there is an analysis of realism hiding in the comedy, that touches and compels the listener.

Chris Taylor takes his distinctive guitar exploration to new and  exciting zones of impressiveness on songs such as ‘Passionate Sunday’ and ‘Make A Decision’, and continues to utilize his now infamous keys-attached-to-guitar contraption, a key-tar-esque triumph in homemade music tech. Hear him veer between his 2 conjoined instruments in real time on the likes of ‘Change’ and know that it’s even more impressive in person.

Gavin Murdoch plays drums with feeling, put that on a t-shirt! But  once you hear the drum part to major banger ‘Rein It In’ you will  understand how the drums play more than just accompaniment in Dancer, this is democratic musicality at its finest.

The elastic bass attack from Andrew Doig doesn’t really sit still or too steady, choosing wonky melody over anything too rigid and it’s all testament to a love affair with the instrument and its infinite possibilities. Listen as it loops with medieval inclination throughout the strange ‘A Diagnosis’, a spaced out jammer which culminates in a brief sobbing frenzy courtesy of Shake Chain’s Kate Mahony.

Ultimately the LP was recorded and mixed by Ronan Fay, mastered by Álvaro Lissón with artwork by Scott Jason Smith  and photography by Anthony Gerace.