Lau // Race the Loser
This isn’t an album for folk lovers, this is an album for music lovers and not only deserves but manages to command your full attention when listening to it.
Release Date: 1st October 2012
Lau - 'Race the Loser'
Folk music has always been a bit hit and miss for me, and in fact more usually miss than hit, so when ‘Race the Loser’, the third album from Lau, popped through the letterbox I was prepared for another album of sweet but dull acoustic music that saps a little bit of the soul each time you listen to it. I could not have been more wrong. This is a fantastic record, full of complex but not self-indulgent structures that combine traditional folk elements with modern approaches and an extremely successful use of electronics which have so often on other records I’ve heard come across as purely being included for the sake of creating something ‘different’ without worrying about whether or not it works. Lau understand how to create balance between the different ideas and instruments, acoustic and electronic, that they use, and it is this that raises ‘Race the Loser’ head and shoulders above so many of their contemporaries.
The production on the record is also fantastic and the whole thing has a certain edge that on occasion provides an unexpected but welcome shiver down the spine.
This isn’t an album for folk lovers, this is an album for music lovers and not only deserves but manages to command your full attention when listening to it.
9/10 BBV
