More Skin With Milk-Mouth
Giraffes? Giraffes! make complicated music feel playful on More Skin With Milk-Mouth. Joseph Andreoli and Kenneth Topham send guitar and drums in several directions while keeping the melodies recognisable. Fast playing and changing rhythms have a purpose beyond demonstrating ability. They keep giving the pieces a different direction.
When the Catholic Girls Go Camping, the Nicotine Vampires Rule Supreme. begins with quick tapped guitar figures and active drumming. A melody is already present before the piece opens up further. Moving into a clearer guitar solo makes it more immediate without losing its unusual character. The duo give the technical activity a sense of fun.
The longer pieces explore a similar relationship. A pattern returns, becomes familiar and then changes again. The second track adds a spoken passage. The voice and rough guitars fit the record's strange character, forming part of the music rather than an interruption that needs to explain everything.
Emilie Sagée's Secret creates a clear contrast between building tension and holding back. A Quick One, While She's Away then develops the melodies and larger changes over a longer stretch. The band leave enough room for quieter sounds to make the sharper rhythms effective again. Those calmer sections return to more active playing before the whole record loses momentum.
The constant changes are not equally successful throughout. Sometimes the music becomes too busy or its development briefly loses focus. Even so, pleasure in the playing remains stronger than those limitations. More Skin With Milk-Mouth brings technical ideas and direct melodies together convincingly. This small lineup creates a large sound, with enough attention to proportion to turn its instrumental ideas into proper pieces of music.
