∆ (Alt-J) - 'An Awesome Wave'

PROS

—They make deconstructed, globalist, post-everything boffin-pop indie of the sort that people are supposed to pretend to like now that we've all got equal torrent-enabled access to the back-catalogues of Fela Kuti, Venetian Snares, and Arthur Russell.
—They were recently fined $100 for urinating from their hotel balcony in Beverly Hills.
—Are they the non-non-self-promoting Wu Lyf?
—Their big hit, "Breezeblocks," is about recently deceased cranky git Maurice Sendak. Timely. So timely, it's almost like they planned it...

CONS

—I have been hitting Alt-J on my keyboard now for nearly an hour now. It still doesn't do anything.
—Oh wait...I think it has justified the margins...Yup. Well, there you go.
—Does the world need another Everything Everything? (This is like saying: "Does the world need another Chernobyl-plus-Bhopal?")
—They are reportedly "obsessed with triangles." Hey, crazy name, crazy guys...You kooky twats.
—This triangle thing...It keeps reminding me of witch house bands with asterisks and hashes in their names. And witch house makes me angry. So very angry.
—Singer Joe Newman affects an American drawl that reminds me a bit of Dave Matthews.
—And his lyrics have a similar level of non-sequitur.
—They're from Cambridge.

VERDICT

Too clever by precisely half, a perfectly wrought bolt from the blue, Alt-J ∆ is the stunningly well-calculated product of minds far superior to ours, and is accordingly very easy to like—to be bowled-over by, even—but somewhat more difficult to love.