The Chap
Issue #26
Ham (Lo Recordings)
By John Everhart
Published: December 1st, 2005 | 12:25pm
London has long been disparaged as a town for musical careerists more likely to be following the latest odious trend of Coldplay than actually having something genuinely original to contribute. The most exciting British bands typically come from remote locations like Glasgow or Brighton, unshackled by the weight of the notoriously hyperbole-driven London press. The Chap is a band from London who are too iconoclastic to ever be pigeonholed into any discernible ideology, too flippant to care what the NME says about them.
Nebulous and impenetrable, rife with indignation and imagination, the Chap deconstruct musical territory paved by the likes of Sonic Youth, the Fall, and the Swell Maps. But at the core, these are irresistible pop songs: fuzzed out, chopped up, and buttressed by cheap yet insistent electronic beats. The visceral “Now Woel” is one of the more straightforward tracks here, riding a groove-driven guitar line redolent of the tossed off ephemera of Pavement’s Wowee Zowee. And when you hear the sheer ebullience of disco-trash scorcher “I Am Oozing Emotion,” it becomes evident that the Chap, if they so chose, could write a blinding indie chart topper.
There’s an undeniable vitality here, and when I think of the Chap’s London, I think of the one depicted in Mike Leigh’s film Naked — dilapidated, graying, decaying, yet full of abundant imagination and abject beauty. Maybe Ham’s a goof, maybe it’s heartfelt, but it’s ultimately deeply affecting, magical even.
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