The Newcastle -based Charts and Graphs resurface with a surge of bright fascination in their newest single, “Passive Moodswings,” the lead track from their forthcoming album, "Paper Cuts." This, for its part, is a hybrid blend of post-punk rigour and recent dance-punk aesthetics, something quite different from what is currently being explored anywhere else. Picture a caffeine-jittery Talking Heads, powered by the angular fury of the Gang of Four, let loose in a park while the rhythms of LCD Soundsystem reverberate from your Walkman. That is more or less the kind of kinetic, slightly disorienting energy that Charts and Graphs exude.
“Passive Moodswings” features looped synthesizers that glisten, just as loops of analog synths should, over a tight bassline and drumming that are concise and purposeful. The beat propels while the melody is almost lightweight, exactly suiting the song’s themes of conflicted impulses, ambition versus inertia. This is the music of those who know the difficulty in wanting to engage with the world, but never quite succeeding. There is a quiet irony in that inertia, and Charts and Graphs have captured it with an eye for precision and imaginative abandon.
This single is remarkable for its evidence of the band's ability to deliver something that feels so characteristic and modern, yet still harnessed to punk’s most significant strength, the sense of immediacy. The result is as beat-driven as it is contemplative, a track suitable for late-night introspection and underground nightlife.
On “Passive Moodswings,” Charts and Graphs make their case for the corner of the music theory room, laid out with lush, pretty sounds rich in intellectual texture and deeply moving emotion. In a society thirsty for the new, these young people are speaking to all kinds of apathetic ambition, and they listen in complete alarm.
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