Pitchfork

"[I]t's okay for somebody to be into both Throbbing Gristle and Belle and Sebastian," Voxtrot's Ramesh Srivastava writes on his blog, "and I'm pretty sure that's a good thing." When Srivastava moved to Glasgow at the age of 19, he'd already written the tracks that would comprise the Raised By Wolves EP, songs with deft arrangments and charming melodies that evoke Belle & Sebastian, Morrissey, and the Lucksmiths, but with jagged, rumbling guitars remindful of early Cure and, sometimes, Joy Division. Srivastava immersed himself in Glasgow's nightclub scene, developing a particularly strong affinity for Optimo. The commingling of his jangle-pop roots and his newfound love of dance music is writ large in the Texas-based band's turbocharged twee.

Voxtrot's two EPs are so consistent and evenly matched that I'm going to address them as a single entity, although Raised By Wolves suffers slightly for having one tepid track, the late-Jawbreakerish "Wrecking Force". There's nothing terribly wrong with it; it's just not as spectacularly right as the other nine songs rounding out Voxtrot's recorded work. If there's any significant difference between the EPs, it's that Wolves is a little more obvious, with wafting respites like "The Start of Something" and "Long Haul" to blunt the serrated thrust that overtakes Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives. This is probably why Wolves lept out as my initial favorite, until I'd listened to both EPs for long enough to internalize them and consider Mothers slightly stronger, if slightly more forbidding.

Despite his jones for beats, Srivastava complies with twee tradition by allowing his singing and lyrics to assume center stage. His voice is forceful and tender in equal measure, dancing around central melodies with uncommon mobility and vigor. On "Missing Pieces", he moves effortlessly from a quivering falsetto to a soulful moan within the space of the word "you"; "Rise Up in the Dirt" finds him equally comfortable at a croon and a near-shout. His lyrics strike a balance between open-hearted sentimentality and wry bemusment, leavened with artful obliquity and lexical music. If its melody weren't so exquisitely naïve, "The Start of Something" would collapse under lines like "I'm a love letter away" and "If I die clutching your photograph/ Don't call me boring, it's just 'cause I like you." But Srivastava seems to be at the mercy of his paramour to an almost unhealthy degree, and bitter acknowledgements of this dependency repeatedly deflate his whimsy: "Everyone loves a man who lets the hardest people/ Build him up and cut him down to loveable size," he sings on "Soft & Warm".

Voxtrot's music, though, is far more than a platform for Srivastava's vocal performances. The guitar work on both EPs, but particularly on Mothers, is a model of constrained energy, and the songs blossom with controlled detonations, like small charges set off sequentially to demolish a huge building. The complex arrangments never intrude upon the lucid melodic arcs; subtle string and brass sections are meted out judiciously. A twinkling piano phrase tiptoes around the careening guitars of "Rise Up in the Dirt"; a fountain of chimes spills languidly over "Long Haul". And while Voxtrot's kinetic thrust may be the product Srivastava's inspiration, the rhythm section has to be credited for realizing it. Like the vocals, the basslines use melodies the way a gymnast uses parallel bars, their combination of mobile force and memorable sonority evoking the Dismemberment Plan's Eric Axelson. The percussion is crisp and compressed, so that each song displays lively patterns of overlapping movement within a tight sonic field. As is always the case with music like this, you'll come for the droll melodies. But whether it's the simmering drum and voice breakdown of "Missing Pieces" or the wedge of stately post-punk dropped convincingly into the middle of the otherwise fey "The Start of Something", you'll stay for the inspired songwriting choices and confident execution.

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