Leader Cheetah
The Sunspot Letters
11 Track, LP (2009, Spunk!)
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Related: Leader Cheetah.
“He said, 'Searching for a god I am'/'Hard enough to find an honest man.'” Is Dan Crannitch channeling Yoda on ‘Bloodlines’, the first single from Leader Cheetah’s debut LP The Sunspot Letters? Either way, one of the songs of the year it makes; the product of a band returning to their parents’ records after brief flirtations with the dance-punk fixations of their peers. Back then, they were called The Pharoahs, so do we accuse them of not being true to themselves – and their time – by executing a near-perfect stylistic backflip? And what then to make of Crannitch’s voice, which once recalled the affected Brit-punk of Bloc Party, but now evokes a more robust Neil Young (or if we’re really being cynical about it, Interpol’s Paul Banks)? Tracks like ‘Rosewater Smile’ confirm that, yes, this is the real him. You can’t fake the sort of emotional integrity he reaches here, ably backed by Little Aida’s Tess Rubenstein, who shadows him like Emmy does Gram. Lyrically, the album’s a bit of a jumble, protagonists lost as much as they’re found, but in trading their stovepipes for westerns, Leader Cheetah are all the better for it. An early – and grand – salvo for album of the year.
by Darren Levin
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