Cheer-Accident – Here Comes the Sunset
Skin Graft Records
Alt-J – The Dream
Infectious Records

Cheer-Accident have been making music for over 40 years. Through various changes of personnel, a core group based around vocalist and songwriter Thymme Jones has managed to produce an enormous array of recordings in just about every contemporary music style. Each new one seems to fall victim to not-as-good-as syndrome, almost invariably compared negatively to 2009’s Fear Draws Misfortune. But that’s missing the point. Cheer-Accident don’t so much make albums as unfold episodes of a single rolling project.

Here Comes the Sunset (cover above) opens with the mildly crazed “Star Vehicle (4 flats)” and then indulges in some velvet-booth jazz-funk on “Maison de Velours Écureuil”. After which, Jones keeps shuffling the genre cards with every track. It’s intoxicating stuff, but perhaps a touch confusing if you’ve never approached Cheer-Accident before. Incidentally, the band name comes from a browser tag in a greetings card shop: sorry to hear about your accident – get well soon, kind of thing.