Fear of Fours
| Fear of Fours | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Lamb | ||||
| Released | 17 May 1999 | |||
| Genre | Trip hop, drum and bass, jungle | |||
| Label | Mercury | |||
| Lamb chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| Entertainment Weekly | B |
| Pitchfork Media | (8.5/10) |
| Q |  |
| Rolling Stone | |
Fear of Fours is the title of Lamb's 1999 album. It was a moderate success, reaching UK #37, the band's only UK Top 40 album entry to date.
The fourth track is not included on the album's track listing. It is a single struck chord which effectively ends the song "B Line" preceding it. This deliberate omission is a nod to the album's title, whose sentiment is revealed in a deeper level throughout the album: unusual time signatures. "Soft Mistake" is in 10/8. "B Line" is driven by a prominent bass line in 6/8, followed by the single note track 4. "Less Than Two" is in 12/8, backed by a repeating twelve beat phrase "needing you wanting you loving you holding you", and "Softly" is in 6/8. "Alien" continues in 12/8, although the rhythms are at times ambiguous. "Five", the most intricate yet, is in 5/8,5/8,5/8,5/8,5/8,6/8,5/8,6/8, which could also be written as 10/8,10/8,11/8,11/8. "Lullaby" rounds off the album in a slow, lazy 3/4 time. "Little Things" has a rather complex rhythmic pattern, which nevertheless converges to 4/4, or a multiple, depending on notation.
However some of the tracks are more conventional: "All In Your Hands", "Bonfire", "Ear Parcel", "Fly" all have time signatures which are at least divisible by 2 or 4, even though they may not be written as 4/4 per se. "Here" again has a 4/4 structure to it, though the bass plays rhythms which stress this as 3+3+2/8.
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