If you were to award points for titles alone, then Manchester's enigmatic NARCISSUS would be re-writing the rules for Mensa membership with "Filling Emptiness With Swedish Furniture."
Traditionally, though, when you get beyond the initially diverting titles and unusual packaging (Narcissus also score here, housing this EP within a set of abstract postcards and slogans including the extremely Fall-esque "You fuckin' amateurs" accompanying the card for track 3, "Jumpin' Thru Hoops") you're usually set up for a fall on discovering that the marketing skills usurp the musical content.
Not so with Narcissus, though: a band who's self-centred moniker espouses the fact that Manc duo Ben Guy and ex-Rain Band mainstay Chris James have plenty to offer of substance and spend the (potentially indulgent) 25 minutes duration here burrowing their way into your heart.
Recorded onto an ageing 8-track machine, these tracks have a way with mid-fi intelligence and DIY excellence similar to the approach utilised by Welsh/ Scouse triumvirate Mountaineers, with atmosphere paramount and Ben Guy's unusually feminine voice always to the fore.
Spooke opener "Kingdom" is immediately striking, with a drone-y feel, jaring synths'n'samples, a typically baggy bassline and a distant Chemical Brothers influence and more obvious Future Sounds Of London sample seeping in. It's a fine and less-than-obvious introduction, but by no means typical of what follows.
Indeed, second tune "Canned Applause" heads off at another tangent altogether. With an easy groove, Fender Rhodes and insistent E-bow-y guitar, it's far more reminiscent of the shuffly grooves Twisted Nerve have mad their own, with a dash of Slo-Mo thrown in for good measure.
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Ben Guy's heavily-vocodered vocals here are disquieting enough, but nothing compared to the weird, distorto overload that introduces "Jumpin' Thru Hoops". Even stranger is the fact it settles into a smouldering Radiohead-style groove and revels in the smoothly repetitive "fuckin' amateurs!" chorus.
They lose ground a little with "A Time And A Place". OK, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the tricky drums and clipped guitar chords, but it seems a tad earthborn compared to what surrounds it. No such problems with the closing "Beautiful View", however, which builds splendidly from a simple keyboard'n' acoustic guitar motif to the kind of happy-sad melodica-fuelled melancholy New Order would once have branded as their own.
"Filling Emptiness With Swedish Furniture", then, is far too dog-eared, emotional and lopsided to ever pass for Ikea, then. Thank Goodness, as there should always be a place for such great, low-key invention.
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