Reviews

Since Animal Collective turned heads and stirred interest in pseudo-shoegaze/electro/psychedelia with Merriweather Post Pavillion a while back, the genre’s become one of the easiest and most popular bandwagons to jump on. Canadian band Braids certainly tick all the right boxes to fit into that niche.

However, with Raphaelle Standell-Preston behind the mike Braids are well equipped to carve out their own identity, which they certainly do with Native Speaker. ‘Same Mum’, ‘Plath Heart’ and the closing instrumental ‘Little Hand’ all shuffle pleasantly along with hooky keyboard and drumming that effortlessly lock in with each other. But it’s Raphaelle Standell-Preston who owns the album. Her singing punctuates the electro haze which surrounds her, and totally blows away any assumptions of a sub-standard Animal Collective. The potential shown on Native Speaker gives no doubt to the growth that’s possible for Braids (some critics have compared them to early Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire), so they seem well set up to overtake some bandwagons.