Album Review: Machine Translations - Oh

J Walker returns with his first album in four years and it finds him in an eclectic-yet-economical mood.

The Bright Door (2013) possessed polish and an ornate sheen while Oh replaces that with rougher edges and a subtle shift toward a lower-fi aesthetic.

The opening track Made A Friend sounds like Beck in his melancholic balladeer mode before the first single Parliament Of Spiders (and later, the title track) veer off into skewed art-pop mode akin to Spoon. This album highlights the stronger focus on rhythm and melodies that jump from the speakers with more immediacy. Sola gets even more primal with a Sonic Youth-meets-Sparklehorse guitar skronk and driving urgency.

Walker has a way of vocally inhabiting his songs in a range of styles, from slacker dispatches to warm songwriter crooning. It shows his magpie approach to songwriting, but even though the styles vary the sonic palette he utilises is cleverly controlled and its elements are blended in service to the song and never for the sake of obtuse musical eccentricity. The instrumental Room 17 particularly stands out with its delicate phrasing and Dirty Three-indebted European, gypsy sway.

Oh is an endlessly fascinating album, still built on multi-layered creativity but also presented in concise and vibrant form.