A much under-appreciated album this year I think, Habibi have unfortunately had the poor grace to release a neo-girl group guitar-pop record at precisely the point when that particular idiom has entirely fallen from favour amongst the indie-cognoscenti, and I fear they may have suffered from this poor timing, irrespective of the fact that this is the best example of the form I’ve heard since the great 2010-11 goldrush.

So, even if you (mistakenly, IMHO) cringe at your prior enthusiasm for the Vivians and Dum Dums of yore, and now listen exclusively to mogadon death-rave, obscure hardcore and compilations of African keyboard funk, I would still defy you, or anyone with the slightest love of pop and strumming guitar business for that matter, to listen to cuts like ‘Detroit Baby’ and ‘Sweetest Talk’ and not be touched on some level by their sweet, measured, bad-ass perfection. The Velvet Underground quotation in the latter makes for a particularly killer moment, I feel.

Minus one or two songs in the middle that don’t quite do it for me, this is just a great LP – proof positive that reverby guitars, stand-up drumming, nebulous Flying Nun-type influences and marginally ‘sassy’ American accents can still hit the bullseye when executed with sufficient class & panache.

I was going to dig up the bit I wrote about Habibi in that ever-helpful March blog post, but frankly it was rubbish, so we’ll just leave it at that.

Listen to Habibi’s stuff on Soundcloud, and buy the record from Burger.

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On an entirely different topic, I can’t help but note that this – somewhat inappropriately – is the 666th post on Stereo Sanctity. Not much of a score when you consider I’ve been going since May 2004 or something, but hey. Maybe I should have lined up an Electric Wizard album or something. Thanks for sticking around.

Labels: best of 2014, Habibi