“I took a long hit on the pipe… and I felt my body slowly dissolve into digital dots” intones Irvine Welsh as Warmduscher’s latest record begins. That their fifth album begins with this surreal spoken-word tale does not feel in the least bit surprising. Their music has, after all, always felt a bit like a messy acid trip, full of debauched stories about the seedy underbelly of modern life.
Yet, if the start of Too Cold To Hold is faintly predictable, the rest of the album opens up into something rather more unexpected. The band have always weaved elements of hip-hop and jazz into their messed-up punk-funk but here they’ve refined it and pushed it forward. The sounds seem richer and more ambitious. What was once chaotic seems more artfully controlled. The band, dare we say it, feel like they’ve grown up a little?
