The spiny tingle of excitement, the building anticipation of ritual! Chord progressions in the key of the heart! The Cairo Gangs music is a refreshing dip in the pools of classic youth-pop, with songs of star-crossed breakthroughs and guitars cross-talking with a bejeweled ennui and a sly sting that appeals to a higher order. Is it something in our head or maybe in the skies above? Yet, the stars arent going to save us, theyre destined to glitter dispassionately as we go down againand rise up again. The untouchable stands outside, removed by necessity from the castes of our world. This remove makes him the most reliable narrator in tracking the way of things between people. Throughout Untouchable, Emmett The Cairo Gang Kelly is such a narrator, made bemused and dizzy by the sights swirling around him, the fraying sense of connection and peoples need so keen to be self-aware that we write our own autobiographies before we should ever be called to witness, publish our diary pages and call them entertainment. As these instincts develops into interrelationships, contradictions abound for our singer. Dwelling in the head while noticing thingsor waiting to notice thingsand lyrical to the bitter-sweet end, The Cairo Gang serve up sweetand-sorrow reveries of Untouchable, a breathtaking series of entanglements and attempts to break free, a trace of dolor wafting through their dancing riffworks. 2015s Goes Missing sang to the listener of dreamy isolation through a disembodied production; parts assembled from different moments, times and places, and woven mechanical into an irresistible pop whole. Untouchable rewires the machine, spinning tales of dissolution from a shared space on the way to new hope. Cut live and immediate with shimmering waves of quicksilver guitar, telepathic harmony voices and scraps of yesterdays rhythm and produced glisteningly by Kelly and Ty Segall, Untouchable exemplies the joy of science and the search for knowing: a tessaract-like bridging of musical and emotional dimensions that has formed the crux of so many essential musical admissions from the past halfcentury. The shadows of the rock and roll era are cast long across the face of Untouchablefrom the majesty of the soloing on Thats When Its Over to the twinned leads, ascending arpeggios and Petty-esque sardonicisms of the closer, What Can You Do? Approach the unattainable on Untouchable and having flown so close to the sun, promise to do so again, and soon. Gliding on the wings of sweet melody and the thrilling chimes of freedom is a rare thing, and a bird in the hand for The Cairo Gang.
