“I saw you licking a dollar bill / I'm in the graveyard if looks could kill”

That’s quite an opening line to an album – profound, playful and hooky. It captures Miike Snow’s iii neatly, but when you consider Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg’s (also known as Bloodshy & Avant) background as writers of Britney's Grammy-winning 'Toxic', it’s a fairly safe assumption to expect a hook or two. Add Andrew Wyatt (Miike Snow’s third member) and his work with Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars to the mix, and you’ve got a recipe for the hookiest hooks in hook town!

Opener 'My Trigger' sets the scene with big beats, off-the-wall vocal manipulation and an off-the-chart hum/whistle factor. It sounds like Stevie Wonder being pulled backwards through a kaleidoscope by Bill Withers on a unicorn. It’s this deeply imaginative subverting of popular forms that makes Miike Snow such a joy, and iii so impressive. It’s pop, but not as we know it – sonic adventures with proper tunes as the end result.

It’s not only the musicianship and production that flit and flicker between recognised norms and unchartered territory, the subject matter is often remarkably versatile, too. For all its glibness, “Genghis Khan” might feel like a tongue-in-cheek commentary on possessiveness, “I get a little bit Genghis Khan / Don’t want you to get it on with nobody else but me”. However, it’s easy enough to pick up on wider strokes around selfishness and insecurity, or other little demons and monsters within.

Whereas there is an undoubted leaning towards playfulness and fun within the writing, I Feel The Weight thuds in with a refreshing candour:

“And it's only me to blame / Cause I pushed the truth away
And pretended to be happy / Tonight, I have to say I feel the weight”.

Who would have thought that an auto-tuned ballad could be so soulful? Yet that’s exactly what this is. Heartfelt, languidly sexy, as each passage melts into the next, this track packs an emotional punch that hits the listener off-guard after a succession of radio-friendly cuts, but in the context of the album it is the perfect track for the perfect moment, as light turns to dark and things get interesting.

Back Of The Car follows – like Tom Petty’s Don’t Do Me Like That crossed with Blackstreet’s No Diggity. Just when you think it is going to kick off, it drops… dubstep-style and the song simmers sinisterly.

For me, though, the album’s centrepiece is one of the more straightforward songs. Yes, Heart Is Full has a craftily engineered sample of jazz and soul vocalist Marlena Shaw as its core, but it’s a barnstorming song with bombastic brass, crammed with fantastic phrasing, diction and – of course -hooks. It’s an exciting fusion of jazz and hip-hop distilled through pop.

I’ve read some disparaging things about Andrew Wyatt’s vocals, pointing out a supposed fragility, but I personally see that as a useful tool to provide a bitter to balance the sweet or a sad to temper the happy. Whatever your take on Wyatt’s voice, it’s pretty hard to deny that his melody making is nothing other than brimming with musicality, from his jazzy phrasing and clipped diction in Heart Is Full to the syrupy beauty of I Feel The Weight. iii’s melodies are never anything less than very strong; never a note wasted.

As the album flows from light to dark, it is readily apparent that Miike Snow are not in the habit of missing a trick, dropping a detail or filling space for the sake of it. Even the bonus digital track (A Run The Jewels remix of Heart Is Full) feels essential. Not only is it a fresh take on the album’s star turn, but I can’t help but think that finishing on elegant, feel-good Longshot (7 nights) would have been too straightforward.

Miike Snow don’t do “normal”.
Adam Atkins

Website: miikesnow.com
Twitter: twitter.com/miikesnow
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