iLiKETRAiNS - Elegies To Lessons Learnt

Furrowing further down their own inimitable niche of what's being termed, ahem: 'library rock', iLiKETRAiNS' debut album picks up the baton from last year's Progress Reform EP and runs with it. The opening double-whammy of We All Fall Down and Twenty-Five Sins cover, respectively, London's great plague and its subsequent burning to the ground. More personal epitaphs are bestowed upon Donald Crowhurst, a yachtsman who fooled the world with his endeavours before committing suicide, and Spencer Perceval, the only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated. A chuckle-fest this assuredly is not. Musically it attempts to tread the same adventurous ground as some of its protagonists. Imagine The Smiths and Explosions In The Sky cramming in some last minute history revision and you're there. Nick Cave is the adjudicator, scanning for plagiarism of his Murder Ballads album. He arches his devilish eyebrows on occasion, but Elegies is a resounding pass. [Darren Carle]