Alt-J are not that super-easy to like. Mostly because of Joe Newman, who is the singer and main song­writer of the band. His vocals could be described as a spe­cial blend of Daniel Johnston and Antony Hegarty, but the truth is he sim­ply sounds like an uniden­ti­fied car­toon char­ac­ter. It took me sev­eral lis­tens to learn to appre­ci­ate the strange qual­i­ties of his singing, and to rec­og­nize how well it meshes with the strong tex­tures of the sur­round­ing arrangements.

Having such a dis­tinct sound, it’s no won­der Alt-J stands out. But thank­fully that’s not the only rea­son for the buzz. More impor­tant is the fact that they put an excep­tion­ally mature and con­sis­tent col­lec­tion of songs on their debut album ‘An Awesome Wave’. Give it a few lis­tens, it’s time well invested.