March 16, 2007

The Aliens

Astronomy For Dogs

7 / 10 Everyone knows that eccentricities often signify genius – for every time he played snooker with tomatoes Brian Wilson wrote a ‘Good Vibrations’. The Aliens’ frontman and early Beta Band member Gordon Anderson spent much of the past decade battling mental illness, and much of his band’s (completed by former-Betas John Maclean and Robin Jones) debut is as melody-ripe as anything from Wilson’s brain. ‘Setting Sun’ sounds like ‘White Album’-era Beatles siphoned through a spaceship engine, and ‘Rox’ is a ‘Screamadelica’-sized stomp, but what should really earn them your love is the fact that the Sly Stone-ish ‘Robot Man’ was conceived when Anderson began spontaneously doing the robot dance at a bus stop.

Jamie Fullerton

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