This somewhat slippery art-pop collective seems to be getting serious in 2013. Lord Scrummage often hosted (or at least served as the central attraction of) a series of word-of-mouth floating concerts and psychedelic-music happenings via their transient tenancies at various local loft spaces over the last five years. This crisply produced, confident and crazy-sounding full-length is Scrummage’s first proper release in three years, Triangle or Die. Expect a broad range of musical styles, from dark disco deconstructions to effect-addled hip-hop, sleek new-wave lounge ballads that coax you out onto the floor for a sweaty slow dance, then twirling breakneck into a coked-up kind of trip-hop-style. Classy and cheesy all at once, with an overarching irreverence, Scrummage gives you a facetious, vaudevillian middle finger, in which two verses out of ten you’re coaxed to take them quite seriously, until you realize you’re bouncing and grooving to a singer who just breathily crooned that … your breath smells like diarrhea.
This article appears in Jan 30 – Feb 5, 2013.
