Chicago’s volcano! are back with their second full length release and they continue their exploration of melody and noise with both success and on occasion, failure on Paperwork. With their smug lower case ‘v’ and the increasingly popular exclamation point (see Die! Die! Die, !!! and You Say Party! We Say Die!) it is obvious from the outset that there is going to be some well constructed cleverness going on with this band.

volcano! are indeed a form of eruption as their name suggests. A spewing forth of ideas, riffs, percussion and vocal acrobatics that swing wildly in intensity and tempo with the unstoppable determination of a lava flow. What at first appears schizophrenic and confusing soon begins to crystallize into form and function on repeated listens. The one element that stops the records from descending into a demolition derby featuring Primus and Battles is the voice of Aaron With. His is a constantly shapeshifting instrument that would be a sound to behold if he can pull it off live as well as he does on vinyl. His voice swings from a Dirty Projectors wounded yelp to fey indie Mars Volta anguish and then onto the soaring falsetto of a wacky, high on caffeine and sugar, younger brother of Matt Bellamy from Muse. It is the controlled madness of his singing that bleeds life into the music provided by the other two members of the band (Mark Cartwright and Sam Scranton).

The Battles comparison is an easy identifier on Paperwork as it appears constantly throughout. The measured beats in ‘Sweet Tooth’ and the mechanical stomping rhythms of ‘Slow Jam’ are key examples of that metronomic approach that made Battles’ Mirrored one of last years best. It is also part of their sound that is essential as it anchors the erratic parts of the songs as they jerk and strain against their ropes like kites in a hurricane. On the other side of the coin, tracks like ‘Tension Loop’ and first half of ‘Kitchen Dance’ both have a lovely Dirty Three/Tortoise organic looseness to them that provide some levity from the electronic squalls and sharp guitar blasts that are the more dominating feature of the record.

The standout track on the album is ‘Africa Just Wants To Have Fun’ that may just be poking a bit of fun at the way pop music is all of a sudden incorporating African influences. Yes we are looking at you Vampire Weekend and Yeasayer. ‘Africa…’ is their most concisely structured song and as well as the swipe at the musical magpies it also has in its sights politicians and high profile people like Bono and the methods and efforts they use to try to bring relief to the continent. With lyrics like “This desert is so beautiful, hey lets make a music video, yeah/Me and the natives will be singin’ holdin’ hands we gonna stop all the violence in this land/I’m gonna set this world straight, I’m suckin’ dick at the G-8”, let’s just say it doesn’t paint them in the saintly light that they may be accustomed too.

Paperwork works marvelously well in translating the modus operandi that the band laid out for the record. Their first album (Beautiful Seizure) “strived for maximal intensity in all directions – the loudest louds, the quietest quiets, the prettiest pretties, the weirdest weirds, and the most extreme juxtapositions between all of these elements”. With the new songs they were looking to “retain those explosive powers but add some restraint to make the peaks more rewarding”. They have without doubt achieved this and the results are an exhausting but rewarding ride through all facets of clarity and insanity. If anything their only failure is that they don’t isolate and spotlight those peaks enough. It is the only criticism preventing Paperwork from being a uniquely brilliant record. Instead it is a frustratingly great 2nd album for volcano! and one of the more interesting of 2008.