Get the Blessing have won their share of prizes over a six-year career that has produced four good albums, but if there were an award for doing more with less, and doing so with a deadpan sense of humour, then the Portishead-spawned jazz-rock band would be runaway favourites. Their strategy is a jazz horn sound derived from Ornette Coleman's unruly sax/trumpet harmonies, laid over the hooks and backbeats of rock – and here they do it with even more laid-back nonchalance than usual, and a wider sweep of sound effects. The ghostly mewing of a theremin is invoked by Jake McMurchie's sax tone on the opening Quiet, over Adrian Utley's guitar hook and the soft slap of new Radiohead recruit Clive Deamer's jazzy brushwork. Little Ease features Pete Judge's long trumpet calls over a crunching rock vamp, the pumping Corniche gets close to Sons of Kemet territory with its tuba-like riffs, Antilope sees Judge in electric-Miles mode, and Viking Death Moped pounds on like Thus Spake Zarathustra played by the band that cut the theme to The Killing. Trope is a distorted lament, Lope a barging Latin dance. It's probably their best album yet, and the titles aren't bad either.
Get the Blessing: Lope and Antilope – review
Layering Ornette Colemanish harmonies over rockier beats and hooks, this much-garlanded band are back with an ever wider sonic sweep than ever, writes John Fordham