A kaleidoscopic trip through Warmdüscher's ever-evolving sound, Too Cold To Hold pushes boundaries with daring, defiance, and a touch of chaos.

When it comes to Warmdüscher releasing new music, it is always a good idea to factor in an element of surprise. Over their by now well-established career they have consistently demonstrated a positive glee in indulging ideas which on paper may seem out of left field and making them work; this most recent record of theirs, Too Cold To Hold is in a sense a manifestation of what happens when you elevate that same process to a greater power. The fact that the record is self-produced may well have played a part in this, as it certainly gave the band looser reins to go in whatever direction they wanted to explore; as it turns out, this is often, in this album, multiple directions at once. Quite possibly the fact that Too Cold To Hold is coming out at this point in their career is playing a role, too: especially considering their intense activity on the gig circuit, this is by now a band which has grown very confident in a recognisable musical voice, which has achieved to some extent cult status, and which is confronted with the issue of not producing something overfamiliar while also incorporating the trademark signatures a very loyal audience has come to expect. Too Cold To Hold feels like the result of all these pressures, and a very successful result in that it feels surprising without ever becoming alienating.

Incresingly often over their previous offerings, Warmdüscher’s MO has been to demonstrate a remarkable range of different moods, from the contemplative to the defiant, by making elements drawn from different musical suggestions – from prog-rock to jazz to blues ballad – work against the backdrop of their instantly recognisable disco-bop rhythm. This has given them a remarkable versatility, and more than ever in this record there is a feeling of being confronted with polyglots of music, expressing themselves in different languages from one track to the next but still recognisable in that they are speaking with the same voice (incidentally, Clams Baker’s vocals really take front stage in this record, especially in the more contemplative tracks such as Pure At The Heart). There are moments in which it feels the album is launching into full-on psychedelia: see Cleopatras (featuring vocals from CouCou Chloe and lyrics about energy vampires) for a good example, a highly dynamic track which relishes in broad sounds and feels vaguely unhinged both in the pace of the music and in the lyrics. Elsewhere the mood is grittier and resonates with the type of experimental punk you might encounter at a very specific kind of small London venue: Top Shelf comes to mind first and foremost, once again with lyrics very aptly matching the overall vibe of the track. Immaculate Deception feels like it has received an injection of American blues, especially in the treatment of the guitars, but then it incorporates prog elements and rap vocals from Jeshi, somehow managing to wrap it all together; Staying Alive is packed with adrenaline and confidently hefty in its sound.

If one hiccup is to be found in this record, it is that it’s trying to do so many innovative things at once that it can linger between surprising and disconnected. This is not, in itself, an issue – having too many ideas is far better than having too few – but the pace at which the album keeps looking in different directions can feel somewhat disconcerting. Perhaps, though, this too is by design: perhaps the real key by which Too Cold To Hold is to be interpreted is given by the spoken-word segment delivered at the very beginning and setting the context for the album’s storytelling as a psychedelic experience (the voice belongs to Irvine Welsh, of Trainspotting and, perhaps more relevantly here, of Klaus Blatter fame). The official title of this segment is, after all, An Introduction by Irvine Welsh, and like all good introductions, it may very well be a condensation of what can be expected from the rest of the album. If this is the case, then Too Cold To Hold is deliberately constructed to feel like a good trip, and the slightly disjointed, disorienting element is – as some unsavoury Silicon Valley characters would say – a feature, not a bug. If you choose to take that first hit on the pipe, you can expect to lose your way for a while, and then find something else (find yourself, even?) in the process. If Too Cold To Hold is the musical embodiment of a good trip, though, listener beware: this is very good stuff indeed, and it hits very hard.