saturday looks good to me - fill up THE room

The result is an album that fuses all of the above with a wild, dizzying, restless spirit that sees Thomas break through into true greatness. When artists talk about song cycles that’s usually a cue to put on some Kylie, but “Fill Up The Room” is a deliriously plotted journey that throws itself headfirst into ebbs, flows and epiphanies: it’s as if Thomas has just woken up from a revelatory dream and needs to lay it all down on tape while he can still remember. So we travel from the doo-wop of “Apple” and the near-psychedelic indie pop of “(Even If We Die On The) Ocean” – featuring “children screaming speeches into microscopic tape recorders” – to the surging, howling, near seven minute, neo-folk genius of “When I Lose My Eyes”. We see Os Mutantes dance with Elvis Costello on “Make A Plan”, handclap and jive with the kids in corduroy on “The Americans” – in which “birds on the roof mutter names out of context” – and submit to tape loops and Appalachian weirdness on “Whitey Hands”. By the end, those four albums lie shattered in tiny pieces, and “Fill Up The Room” has done just that. Records this good really shouldn’t come this late in the year, but SLGTM have just produced one of 2007’s finest.