Steeple Remove: Position Normal

Yes, yes, I know. This album came out at the end of 2015. I’m at least 6 months late. ‘Never knowingly on the pop pulse’ isn’t the motto of this website for no good reason. But come on, have a look at my Google Drive – see that folder there? That’s got some reviews of albums that have come out recently that I’ll be posting soon. Really.

Oi! What are you doing? Don’t look at that other folder! Stop it! Give me the mouse back! Forget you ever saw what you just saw. Please.

Ahem…anyway we’re here to talk about French band Steeple Remove’s first album for 6 years, Position Normal, and not what’s lying about in my cloud storage. I don’t know much about the city of Rouen, other than it featured in the game Call of Duty 3. Thankfully Steeple Remove don’t seem to take their influence from that, so there’s no songs about annoying teenagers continually headshotting you and then pretending to teabag your prone body.

Or are there…?

No. There are not. (I don’t think so anyway).

What is does have are songs which successfully meld synth-led motorik and post-punk influences. Other blogs may have honed in on Bauhaus or a trippier Echo and the Bunnymen sounds coming through, but – in a move which is sure to see me fired from the Both Bars On team – I think Position Normal has more than a little something of Simple Mind’s classic 1980 album Empires & Dance about it.

Opener Mirrors is all sharp edged guitar, atmospheric synths and haunting vocal, plus what sounds like a screaming ghost around the halfway mark. (Wooooooh! That’s the sound of a ghost. In French). It gets both effects and more musically heavy for the last couple of minutes before segueing very nicely into the urgent synth and bass repetitiveness of Silver Banana. Plus it has lyrics we can all relate to: “A silver banana in my hand / It’s good enough for you it’s good enough for me”.

We’ve all had that kind of weekend.

My favourite songs are always ones that feature a prominent, driving bass line and Steeple Remove do not disappoint in that regard – see Imaginary Girl, Sunshine, Calling Up and album highlight Activation, which ushers you in with an arpeggiated 8-bit pulse and gives you a one word sing-along chorus to boot.

Throw in a great Psychic TV cover (Unclean) and the eerie Western (as in Cowboy film) sounding Invisible Lights and you’ve got a cracking album that may not be the most original thing you’ve heard, but is certainly an enjoyable and rewarding long player.

Home Run finishes things off in a rousing manner; an optimistic sounding instrumental motorik and synth journey for the most part until it’s allowed to gently dissolve about four minutes through before reprising the main theme in bare-bones fashion.

Get it now from Bandcamp or your local reputable purveyor of recorded sound.

PS We’ve reviewed Steeple Remove before – you can have a look here. And then have a look here.

petecollins