SOEZA have been knocking around for nearly ten years and in their time have released two EPs as well as a debut album in 2001 on French label Prohibited Records entitled ‘Founded by Sportsmen and Outlaws’. ‘Why Do You Do?’ is their first release on Nottingham’s Gringo Records. The band’s line-up has fluctuated since its inception but currently houses six members who have been drawn from the South West of England, centring their activities in Bristol as part of an artist collective called ‘Pull The Strings’.
The collective principle seems central to the SOEZA musical remit as all the songs on ‘Why Do You Do?’ sound as if they were composed organically and collaboratively without a fixed agenda in terms of song length or direction. There is a strong dependence on the rhythm finding the songs’ structure, unsurprising given the fact that four of the band’s members are credited with either drums or percussion. Jazz and prog punk also come into the mix but overall the impression is of music as a by-product of a peculiar (in the old sense of the word) artistic endeavour that only SOEZA fully understand.
When the band emerge from their experimentation with a cohesive track – as on opener ‘Brackish Waters’ their efforts are powerful and convincing. The track is like Rage Against The Machine’s rhythm section smashing into Stereolab’s bright art-pop with perhaps a dash of The Sugarcubes. Iceland’s second most famous musical export hovers discreetly over the album, particularly on tracks like the downbeat ‘Downscale’ where Jenny Robinson’s vocals come across as a calmer and less piquant Bjork.
Tracks like ‘Make It’ and ‘Prince The Boat’ employ a driving and insistent beat punctuated by taut blasts of French horn that segue into more mellifluous arrangements and rhythmic digressions, creating an uneasy soundscape that still manages, against the odds, to maintain a semblance of melody and focus. Acts as diverse as Shellac, Beefheart, Can, The Fall (who SOEZA have supported) and Tortoise can be heard throughout ‘Why Do You Do?’
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The ambient ‘They Glow At Night’, again recalling Stereolab and Sadier’s other project Monade, releases some of the instrumental tension but the threat of an explosive re-entry by percussion or brass is never far from the surface. ‘Genuflect’ (such a great word) opens like Miles Davis’s ‘In A Silent Way’ and it’s his experimental fusion in the late 60s and 70s that also informs SOEZA’s sound. The instrumental ‘Length of Rivers’ provides the album’s peak of musical experimentation and the closer ‘Wounded Hounds and Their Treatment’ its lyrical heart with Ben Owen’s delivery of half spoken words tumbling mesmerically from his mouth like a stream of consciousness.
By no means an easy listen ‘Why Do You Do?’ nonetheless deserves full credit for striking out in a direction that few bands have either the balls or the verve to approach. The whole enterprise also benefits significantly from the apparent lack of overdubbing and for creating a ‘live’ sound that makes the variations in tempo and mood all the more laudable for their skilful application. Not everything works and there are moments when the band threatens to implode under the weight of its own ambition but taken as a whole the album is never less than interesting, challenging and often quite affecting even when the direction seems devoid of purpose or the ideas lack coherency or a sense of musical/artistic resolution.
But I suspect that for SOEZA and their admirers the journey is ultimately more important than the destination.
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