Samuel Jackson Five -‘Samuel Jackson Five’ (Denovali)

Camper Van Beethoven. Brian Jonestown Massacre. Dandy Warhols. Music is full of bands punning and playing with words. On this, their fourth album, Norway’s Samuel Jackson Five are so much playing with words per se, but are introducing singing and attempting to go beyond the post-rock genre of their first three albums (er, apparently. I haven’t actually heard them.)

It might be a slightly obvious -and therefore lazy comparison to make-but perhaps the band that most comes to mind when comparing this album is Battles. In the sense that there is a sense of ‘prog’ meaning good, nods to math-rock and jazz and even -dare I say it -yes, post-rock. The chiming sound on ‘Never-ending Now’ almost works like a call to prayer. Whilst they may be experimenting with time signatures and sonic textures, this is, perhaps, an astonishingly enjoyable and easy album to get to grips with.

It works as a very successful whole, but there are also some standout tracks here ‘…And Then We Met The Locals’ and the wonderfully named ‘Electric Crayons’ (the mind boggles) that are worth checking out. I may have striggled with the notion of ‘progressive’ for years, but here it is in the sense of moving forward, rather than an obsession with wizards and how many keyboards you can get on a stage whilst mangling classical masterpieces.

Take the time to investigate.

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Samuel Jackson Five is out now on Denovali