Written by: Dave Cantrell

Coming to London in 2008 with the aid of none other than Andrew Loog Oldham who’d produced his band in Buenos Aires, arriving in bandages and stitches after being hit by a cab just prior to the flight then meeting his future band mate in a vintage shop while a klepto girlfriend attempted to nick a pair of boots, Max Claps, it would seem, was destined to either form a rock band or land in an asylum. Happily for all concerned, not least the listeners that happen upon this record, the former option prevailed.

Said shopkeeper happened to be Veronica Falls guitarist James Hoare and the band he and Claps cooked up is Proper Ornaments (augmented by Daniel Nellis, bass, Robert Syme, drums), and if you took “Defecting Grey”-era Pretty Things, strained them through a C-86 filter, threw in some VU-inflected Feelies licks for flavor and a dash of JAMC flair, poured some immaculately crafted 2014 studio gloss over the whole concoction, you’d be in Proper Ornaments territory. Track after track, from the gentle motorik pulsebeat of “Now I Understand” to the kaleido-coustic “Ruby” to the deliciously contained gallop of “Stereolab” that, curiously, updates the namesake band’s sound by bathing it in a rumbustious Carnaby groove, there’s barely a misstep taken on Wooden Head. Whatever over-indebtedness, such as on “Step Into The Cold” with its “Mr Soul”/”Waiting For The Man” guitar churn, is amply compensated for by such pure lovelies as the floating dreamalong pop of “Always There” or the epic-in-a-bottle of “You Shouldn’t Have Gone” with its melancholic shimmer, or by the luring mastery of “Sun,” which should be placed immediately on the playlist of every summer-kissed mixtape there will ever be, its timeless downtempo melody perfectly embedded in a luscious garden arrangement – you can almost hear the contented insect hum – that on its own is the soundtrack to the original pop sin, if you will.

Worked out, then, stitches and all. No asylum for Max Claps but instead a crazy-good album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTb8zAkdNwo