Little Dragon: New album drops

Little Dragon release their brand new album Nabuma Rubberband today (May 12 worldwide, May 13 in US). It's a rather fabulous, engagingly eclectic record. 

Their fourth album arrives after an extended hiatus for the band, who spent much of their early career either recording or touring relentlessly. As they told Wax Poetics late last year, it was either stay home and get a day job, or go out and tour and tour. 

In that interview, they talk about their self titled debut, expressing displeasure that their label at the time released their demo recordings without giving them a chance to finish mixing and mastering them properly. For me, part of the appeal of that record is the rawness, so that may have been a good thing, in the long run. 

I really love their debut, but of the followup albums Machine Dreams didn't fire for me, and Ritual Union seemed like a grab bag of tunes written in a hurry between tours - one critic described it as sounding like a bunch of throwaway B sides.  

As The Guardian observed in their review of a live show from March this year, "Little Dragon are emphatically not a band in high definition. Sonically as well as visually, they don't do "obvious". I think that captures the band perfectly. 

They came to NZ as part of The Gorillaz lineup in late 2010, and played an all too brief opening set at The Gorillaz show. They need to come back and do their own show, soon, PLEASE! 

The album is streaming at Amazon, America.