Yet despite insistent, infectious vivacity from the title track that opens the album to the swelling closing chorus of platitudinous swan song Love Life, it is enjoyable without being instantly enchanting. Perhaps because of the showiness and self-referencing, their insistence sometimes seems insincere but this would be an unfair impression. Nevertheless, like a bumptious buffet host whose tries at conviviality become trying, 3DM offer a feast but fail to nourish. What's particularly peculiar about this is that they serve up proper nosh, not hauteur haute cuisine.Under One Sun is a great folk-pop song, full of stabs and swells and la-las. Doors of Perception takes on a medieval minstrel mood between drowsy, lilting choruses and Love (sic) Fool is a fun percussive binge, replete with dub beat, a xylophone line and echoey, explosive bangs. What should sound messy produces a melting pot as endearing as it can be clamorous, divergence typified by the polished She Said that treads a tightrope between zeal and superficiality, too repetitive to build true atmospheric tension. It is the subtler touches, like the deadened, melancholy piano coda concluding Days of the Dance that provide the real depth.
The album is swept along by the trio's evident musicality, mastery of the catchy chorus and flaunting of joyous flourishes. Although 3 Daft Monkeys don't do the carnival underworld theatrics as well as Bellowhead, for example, their combination of mythologised autobiography, pervasively entertaining arrangements and gleeful playing pulls off songs like Civilised Debauchery and Perfect Stranger with dash and deftness. The Antiquated & The Arcane is delightfully played, well-produced and cleverly varnished but though buffed and boisterous, needs bolstering by something stouter. The inclusion of a couple of traditional folk tales would add another dimension to the thrust.
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