It looked like we’d seen the end of Githead after the release of their third album Landing, in 2009.
Thankfully, they’d merely decided to take an extended sabbatical, preferring to concentrate on other musical endeavours. Waiting For A Sign finds the art-rock ‘supergroup’ – Wire’s Colin Newman, Robin Rimbaud of Scanner and Minimal Compact duo Malka Spigel and Max Franken – fully revived. The accent here is on rhythm, most of the songs guided by propulsive patterns and gliding vocals. It’s not a world away from the kind of fluid avant-pop that Wire were producing in the late 80s, but a dreamlike quality adds an other-worldly dimension here. The epic To Somewhere could be a distant cousin of Peter Gabriel’s Shock The Monkey, all the jerky bits streamlined into a melodic flow of sound. Spiegel’s great bassline provides the heartbeat of Not Coming Down, while For The Place We’re In and Slow Creatures are content to wander into ambient drift. They allow a little more abrasion on the title track and What If?, though the highlight is Air Dancing, which builds deliberately before unveiling a gorgeous hook and a kosmische groove.
