Labels: Lightning Heart
Review by: Andy Malcolm
What we have here is three songs of utterly pleasant indie pop / rock stuff from Liverpool way. I was interested to learn this band has a split 7″ record on Polyvinyl, which shows the level of attention I have been paying to that label lately. I suspect they are the first British band ever to be on that label actually. Anyway, given that I was slightly surprised to have never heard of this band before, and this little EP is really rather nice. Stand out track is “How Long Has It Been”, which gently drifts around before kicking in a little crunch on the chorus. This really feels to me like a late 90s indie / emo band, so I’ll throw out pointlessly obscure comparisons like Sarge, the Maccabees (the one from Florida) and the Warren Commission. The guitar work is bubbly and a little mathy but not in a grating way, which sets them apart from their modern peers and more in the ballpark of bands that were taking influence from Braid 10 years ago instead of the Kinsellas today. Sure, the song writing is not entirely polished but it is nice to hear a band take a poppier approach to this style of music – that certainly fits in more with my tastes, even if it doesn’t with the wider populous. So there you go Puzzle, you are more than capable of appealing to washed up old bastards such as myself but I somewhat suspect you don’t quite get the appreciation you are deserving of elsewhere. Which is rather a shame.