Albums

< Ludes
The Dark Art Of Happiness
words by Reef Younis

Well. Well. Well. Look who’ve done a Harold Bishop. Staggering in from the musical wilderness, Ludes waste no time in kicking off their shoes, rodgering your mum by means of introduction before settling down in dad’s comfy chair for the night. Three years! Still it’s quite the return and that’s exactly what this debut is.

‘Badlands’ flies into a (The) Walkmens ‘The Rat’ before exiting sharply at a turn marked The Coral. ‘Never Had A Chance’ snaps with flamboyant ska belligerence and tenacious choral repetition of “We never had a chance!”, ‘Sailor Boy’ hurtles into a searing breakneck medley of The Clash vs MatchBox 80’s B Line Disaster, playing Scaletrix whilst, it seems, the band got Gorillaz in to lend a hand on ‘Free’.

There’s the unnervingly eerie fairground bop of ‘Mr Benson’ and the antagonistic punk sting of ‘Luckiest Theatre’. ‘Dog Don’t Bark’ - complete with ghost chant vocals and a wailing harmonica solo - see Ludes skank and snarl with exuberant menace. It all seemingly becomes too much as ‘Dead Man’s Music’ closes ‘The Dark Art of Happiness’ with a raucous pirate stamp that’s part Joe Strummer gibberish and part Gogol Bordello. Breathless, buoyant and very, very fun.