Locate S, 1 ‘Wicked Jaw’ (Album review)

Despite slithering away from any consistency of genre, there’s no sense of a blindfold-and-dartboard approach on Locate S,1’s third album, which careens from bossa nova to psych-rock with a grace so impressive you quickly stop noticing it at all.

And that is meant as the sincerest of compliments to Christina Schneider, who draws deep from many different wells to make Wicked Jaw one of the most intensely interesting records of the year, so naturally is its on-paper haphazardness orchestrated.

 

Lead single ‘You Were Right About One Thing’ kicks things off with a sultry hotel-lounge backing for Schneider’s pristinevocals, which lilt into an entirely new timbre on latest single ‘Go Back to Disnee’, which in reality goes right back to Rio de Janeiro’s samba-jazz roots.

 

Wicked Jaw is more guitar-focused than previous Locate S,1 records, leaning into frantic up-tempo pop on ‘Have You Got It Yet?’ and delivering duelling Thin Lizzy leads in a memorable intro to the surprisingly epic ‘The Hard Way’. But, if you hadn’t already guessed, elsewhere things go in numerous directions at once – on ‘Daffodil’ a full-on psychedelic wig-out is followed so immediately by free-flowing jazz piano that you wonder if someone flicked the keyboard’s preset dial halfway through recording, while ‘Heart Attack’ is pure pop, all sparkling synths, smiling melodies and nimble basslines.

 

And just as the transition from genre to genre is so smooth as to barely register, so too is the move from first to second to fiftieth listen – beware, Wicked Jaw might suck you in and never let you go.

Words - Joe Ponting 

Locate S, 1 Official