Archive You All Look The Same To Me

This is surely every reviewers worst nightmare - an opening track that lasts just shy of sixteen and a half minutes. Worse still, this downbeat epic is not the longest song on the seven-track epic that is You All Look The Same To Me.

Taking this into consideration, it doesn't take a genius to realise that Archive don't do three-minute blasts of guitar pop - thankfully they don't veer into prog-rock esque self-indulgent territory either. So what do they do? Well, most of the songs here build up (normally rather slowly) from an ambient opening, integrating more and more weird and wonderful instruments as the clock ticks on. And as you'd expect with tracks as long as 17 minutes, Archive are not afraid to experiment - warped beats and eerie samples sit perfectly happily alongside the standard guitar/bass/drums setup on many of the tracks here, most notably the sublime Finding It So Hard.

Ok, so this record won't win you over straight away. You'll need to give it plenty of time and perhaps put your prejudices aside for while - but if you do it may well be a rewarding experience. I'm certainly surprised how much I enjoyed it on the third or fourth listen and I would imagine that Archive are a band I'm going to investigate further in the future.