Herve - Pick Me Up, Sort Me Out, Calm Me Down

A serious case of bassline quantity over quality.

Label: Cheap Thrills
Released: 21st May 2012
Reviewer: El Hunt

'Pick Me Up, Sort Me Out, Calm Me Down' is very aptly titled, because after listening to it in full, that is precisely what many people surely want to do to the man responsible. You may know Joshua ‘Hervé’ Harvey best as the man behind formidable record label Cheap Thrills, or perhaps as the ‘Count’ part of dance –pop duo Count and Sinden; and who can forget their rip-roaring collaboration in 2010 with the Mystery Jets? ‘After Dark’, was catchy and entertaining, with a fidgety guitar riff and shuffling afro beat – the staple tune of every hipster joint in the country. The point is that Hervé should know much better than this. His first solo venture should be a walk-in-the-park blueprint for high-octane electro – but in reality it’s like an e-number fuelled child let loose on a synthesizer and drum machine.

“Sometimes things can get a little gnarly,” booms possibly the most irritating voice in the history of the world – sounding like a cross between the ‘American male’ voice setting on Google translate, and Professor Snape. This track – ‘Gnarly’ - is a particularly frightful point of the album. With the ever-persistent vocals set against some ear-splitting xylophones, whoosh noises and an incessantly pounding drum line, you do, I suppose, have to be rather ‘gnarly’ to listen to this track – or at least possess ear-drums of steel and adequate supplies of aspirin.

It would be unfair to say, though, that the entirety of 'Pick Me Up, Sort Me Out, Calm Me Down' is as dire as the level achieved by the fairly head-in-hands ‘Gnarly’ or the first single ‘Better Than A BMX’. ‘Return Of The Living’ is, even with its unsteady lyrical grounding, sort-of entertaining. Reminiscent of Zombie Nation’s ‘Kernkraft 400’, it is an ode to the living dead, saturated with saw-synths and a grating bassline. Bordering on catchy, it might not send you fleeing in terror to The Winchester for a pint until this all blows over; in fact ‘Return of the Living’ is the least terrifying thing on the album. The opener ‘Gloomin’ is not at all unpleasant either, with some dramatically quickening violins before that vital bassy ‘drop’. In fact it’s easy to imagine both of these tracks being spun at underground electro nights, whereas most of the album seems more fitted to booming out the back-seat subwoofer of the nearest clapped-out jalopy. Therein lies the major issue with 'Pick Me Up, Sort Me Out, Calm Me Down'. If Harvey could perhaps leave more of the open space for melody that starts to creep in on the better tracks, he could potentially be penning electro bangers. The recent popularity of dance producers like SBTRKT and Julio Bashmore only serves to highlight that this is a serious case of bassline quantity over quality. It would seem Hervé might well need picking up and calming down after all. Rating: 2/10