Pram

A truly beguiling and befuddling band from Birmingham, Pram is the sound of waking up in the middle of a loopy dream, disorienting yet comforting. A dream is, after all, reminder of your own inherent creativity and unique wiring, and isn't there something assuring about confronting that?

Their music is hard to sum up, mostly because it slides around in such a fluid and abstract fashion. Here, it's kraut rendered with plastic children's toys; there, it's swanky lounge projected through a kaleidoscope of plastic beads and broken bottles; now, it's lo-fi post-punk with car horns and Farfisas instead of battered guitars and detuned drum kits.

 

A presence you really can only cultivate when you are not concerned with how you're received. Vocalist Rosie Cuckston sings like a Trish Keenan who's been Benjamin Button'ed, simultaneously young and old, and most of their pieces present as rock tracks but quickly reveal themselves to be arranged contrarianly, pile-ups of loops and samples rather than verse-chorus-verse structures. 

Despite years of ho-hum sales and rather negative reviews—an infamous zero from NME, for example—they went on and on, putting out several LPs and EPs on more pop- and commercial-leaning imprints before finally finding a home more welcoming to their oddball voice, Domino.

May they unsettle and delight you.