Wild Honey Weather

I've had a strange Euro holiday, to the point where I regard this moment - writing a Sonic Masala blog in an internet cafe in central London - as a pretty good time out. That's probably because of the music I have in my ears though. Austrian quartet Hella Comet have been around for a few years, but I have only listened to Wild Honey, their latest album out through Noise Appeal Records, and it's pretty killer. It's like The Joy Formidable if they had some balls underneath their bombastic maelstroms - nine tracks of explosive pop crumpled and delayed, hidden within the prism of white noise - a Russian doll of sonics to find the melody within. Some tracks, like 'Nektar' or 'Scatter The Ashes' (although the latter song also has a wash of sound that breaks over the chorus akin to a Mogwai melody), are more straight up Euro indie histrionics with easily identifiable melodies, but much of Wild Honey feels raw and elliptic - the husky rasp that bassist Lea Honnek lends to the vocals feels indie-ready, but the coalescing waves of distortion, cymbal flare and noise drives her forward, a sinister edge suddenly and irrevocably all-pervading. The bareness of some of these tracks are deceptive too - like Young Widows, Hella Comet can find unease in repetition.  The perfect balance of sweet and sour, Wild Honey is a salve for the gloom of these winter days of apocalypse. Buy it here.