(Stomp)

Melbourne art-pop outfit’s new album – music to wear a painting smock to

Aleks And The Ramps was formed by film school student Alex Bryant (who became "Aleks" for no particular reason), and latest album Midnight Believer is the work of a group with an ear for the exotic and eclectic. The band’s blend of dreaminess and chaos with a giggly paint-spattered centre brings to mind everyone from fellow Melburnians Architecture In Helsinki and Arts & Crafts label acts such as Broken Social Scene and their many communal offshoots. Like a variety of indie acts that have emerged in the last five years or so, Aleks And The Ramps have a "kitchen sink" mentality to their music, throwing listeners off course by blending acoustic guitars and sweet melodies with effect pedal freakouts and laptops; indie with prog, MOR with psychedelia, and so on, often within the same song. With a growing number of adventurous, variety-packed avant-pop bands to choose from, even within our own country, it takes a degree of effort on the part of the listener to stop this record from merely blending into the background as enjoyable but inessential sonic soup. That said, effort is rewarded in several places – opening track Destroy The Universe With Jazz Hands is a corker, an unholy but wonderful collision of Yes and The Arcade Fire. Circa 1992 Ideas starts out like Bacharach/David’s This Guy’s In Love filtered through the imagination of David Lynch, before progressing into winning indie pop. And single Antique Limb (which closes the album) combines boy-girl pop with Afrobeat guitars, xylophones and, yes, possibly even the kitchen sink.

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MATT THROWER